Preamble

The House met at a Quarter before Three of the Clock, Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair.

PRIVATE BUSINESS.

Brighton and Hove Gas Bill,

Read the Third time, and passed.

Bromborough Dock Bill [Lords],

Shakespeare Birthplace, —c., Trust (Amendment) Bill [Lords],

Read the Third time, and passed, without Amendment.

London Electric, Metropolitan District, Central London, and City and South London Railway Companies Bill (Certified Bill),

As amended, considered; King's Consent signified; Bill read the Third time (pursuant to the Order of the House of 11th December), and passed.

Selsey Water Bill [Lords],

Wakefield Corporation Bill [Lords],

Read a Second time, and committed.

Cardiff Corporation Bill (by Order),

Consideration, as amended, deferred till To-morrow.

London Midland and Scottish Railway (Hotel Water) Order Confirmation Bill [Lords],

Read the Third time, and passed, without Amendment.

Oral Answers to Questions — INDIA.

CAVALRY AND INFANTRY (REORGANISATION).

Mr. DAY: 1.
asked the Secretary of State for India whether he has received any reports as to the progress made in the reorganisation of the cavalry and infantry of the Indian Army; whether the cavalry brigade trains and other
units have been mechanised; and has he received any figures of the additional cost?

The SECRETARY of STATE for INDIA (Mr. Wedgwood Benn): I am circulating a detailed reply, as it has to cover a number of particulars.

Mr. DAY: Can my right hon. Friend say how long the process of reorganisation will take?

Mr. BENN: It is exactly matters of that kind that are dealt with in the reply.

Following is the Statement:

The reorganisation of cavalry and infantry units of the Army in India so as to conform with changes made at home in the direction of providing machine gun companies was given effect on the 1st July, 1929. The Government of India have estimated the financial effect as involving Rs.27 lakhs of initial expenditure and a recurring annual saving of Rs.6 lakhs. Apart from this reorganisation the mechanisation of the following units is now in process of being completed:


1
Cavalry Brigade Train,


1
Divisional Train,


1
Field Artillery Brigade,


1
Field Artillery Brigade Ammunition Column,


2
Divisional Ammunition Columns.

It is not possible at present to give details of the cost of these particular measures.

MILITARY COLLEGE, DEBRA DUN.

Major GRAHAM POLE: 2.
asked the Secretary of State for India if he will give information showing the number of students at present enrolled at the Prince of Wales's Royal Indian Military College at Dehra Dun; and if it is the opinion of the Government of India that the college has now been expanded to the limit most suitable for an educational institution of this character?

Mr. BENN: I understand that the number was 96 last December. The college is being expanded to take a total of 120, which at the present rate of development will be reached in 1932.

COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF, AND CHIEF OF IMPERIAL GENERAL STAFF (CORRESPONDENCE).

Major POLE: 3.
asked the Secretary of State for India whether any steps have been taken to implement the resolution of the India Legislative Assembly, passed in March, 1921, recommending the restriction of direct communication between the Commander-in-Chief in India and the Chief of the Imperial General Staff to matters not involving the Government of India in financial or military obligations without the concurrence of the Legislative Assembly?

Mr. BENN: The terms of the resolution passed by the Assembly on this subject in 1921 differ in a material respect from the terms quoted by my hon. and gallant Friend, as he will see from the copy I am circulating. The principles underlying it were accepted by His Majesty's Government some years ago and have been acted on ever since.

Following is the resolution:
This Assembly recommends to the Governor-General-in-Council that the Commander-in-Chief's right of correspondence with the Chief of the Imperial General Staff should he subject to the restriction that it does not commit the Government of India to any pecuniary responsibility or any line of military policy which has not already been the subject of decision by them; copies of all such correspondence at both ends being immediately furnished to the Government of India and the Secretary of State for India.

ARMY COMMISSIONS (INDIANS).

Major POLE: 4.
asked the Secretary of State for India whether the Government of India accepted the recommendation of the Indian Sandhurst Committee that suitable Indian students of British universities should be granted direct commissions in the Army, and that therefore the reopening of the Officers' Training Corps at the British universities should be proposed, any expense incurred in such a step being borne, if necessary, by the Government of India; whether, since the presentation of the Committee's Report, the Government of India has made any representation to His Majesty's Government in this matter; and, if so, with what result?

Mr. BENN: My hon. and gallant Friend has stated the facts correctly in the first two parts of his question. I am
at present going into the whole matter in order to see what is the most profitable line of advance.

SOLDIERS' CLUB, QUETTA.

Mr. WARDLAW-MILNE: 5.
asked the Secretary of State for India why the soldiers' club and cinema at Quetta has been leased to a French subject; how many British subjects are employed in the undertaking; and whether there is no possibility of a military organisation running the club for the benefit of the soldiers?

Mr. BENN: I have no information, but will ask for the facts.

CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE CAMPAIGN.

Captain PETER MACDONALD: 6.
asked the Secretary of State for India whether he has any information respecting the effects of the campaign now being conducted by Mahatma Gandhi?

Mr. BENN: As the House is aware, Mr. Gandhi's march has caused a certain amount of excitement in the Bombay Presidency, particularly in the districts actually traversed, and a small proportion of village headmen have resigned—temporarily at any rate. Elsewhere little general interest appears to have been aroused. The main object of Mr. Gandhi's campaign, to defy Government by breaking the Salt Laws, has only just been initiated, and it is too early to form any opinion as to the effects.

Mr. BROCKWAY: Has my right hon. Friend seen the interview with Mr. Gandhi that appeared in the "Daily Telegraph" on Saturday, and will be not even now try to find a basis of agreement in that interview and prevent a fatal step being taken between India and this country?

Mr. BENN: The Government policy was very clearly set out in the declaration of 1st November.

Mr. WARDLAW-MILNE: Is it not a fact that His Excellency the Viceroy has done everything possible to meet Mr. Gandhi's views?

Mr. BENN: I need hardly say that the Government, and, I am sure, the whole House, have every confidence in His Excellency.

Colonel HOWARD-BURY: 8.
asked the Secretary of State for India whether he has any information with regard to any steps that have been taken by the Government of India to prevent mass civil disobedience?

Mr. BENN: The policy of His Majesty's Government was stated by the Viceroy in his speech on 25th January, and will be pursued, as circumstances demand, by the Government of India.

Colonel HOWARD-BURY: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that circumstances have changed very much since that date, and that there is a growing feeling now that the law can be disregarded and authority openly flouted, and will be take steps to stop that?

Mr. BENN: That was dealt with in the words of the answer.

RIOTS, CALCUTTA.

Mr. WARDLAW-MILNE: 7.
asked the Secretary of State for India whether he can give any further particulars of the riots which took place in Calcutta on 1st April, with the numbers killed and injured, and state whether there has been any further outbreak of rioting since that date?

Mr. BENN: The official reports that I have received add little, I fear, to the telegrams which have been published in the Press. The known casualties among rioters were three killed and 44 injured. Several of the police were also injured, three seriously. I have received no report of any further rioting. The situation is being discussed between Government and the carters' representatives and inquiries are being made into grievances put forward.

MR. D. M. PANGARKAR (DEPORTATION).

Mr. BROCKWAY: 9.
asked the Secretary of State for India the reason for the deportation from British India of Mr. D. M. Pangarkar, general secretary of the Bombay Oil Companies' Employés Union; whether he is aware that Mr. Pangarkar was born of parents ordinarily resident in British India, and owns land in British India; and for how long the deportation order against Mr. Pangarkar is to operate?

Mr. BENN: I fear I have no information on this matter beyond what I gave the House on 10th February.

Mr. BROCKWAY: Can my right hon. Friend obtain further information?

Mr. BENN: Certainly. A certain amount of information was given to my hon. Friend the Member for Bootle (Mr. Kinley) on the 10th February, and if my hon. Friend desires more, I shall be very glad to make inquiries.

Oral Answers to Questions — TRADE AND COMMERCE.

BRAZIL (IMPORT TARIFF).

Mr. ARTHUR MICHAEL SAMUEL: 10.
asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he will draw the attention of the Brazilian Government to the unfavourable effect of the Brazilian 1900 tariff upon the export of British manufactured goods to Brazil, so that negotiations for adjustments can be entered upon before the Brazilian Government or any State of Brazil invites British investors to subscribe to a loan for national or coffee valorisation purposes in Brazil?

Mr. GILLETT (Secretary, Overseas Trade Department): I have been asked to reply. Representations have frequently been made to the Brazilian Government in regard to the effect of the Brazilian Tariff on British trade, but, having regard to the general economic policy of that country, I see little reason to think that an attempt to open negotiations for a general reduction of duties would be likely to meet with success.

Mr. SAMUEL: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that this question is based upon the specific recommendation of the D'Abernon Commission, and is he doing nothing to carry out that recommendation?

Mr. GILLETT: If it is a recommendation of the D'Abernon Commission, the matter will no doubt be under consideration by the suitable authority.

Mr. SAMUEL: Will it be dealt with by the Tariff Convention at Geneva?

Mr. HANNON: Has the hon. Gentleman called the attention of the Brazilian Government to the extent to which British capital has been used for the development of that great country, and will they not consider some such representation made on behalf of the Government?

Mr. GILLETT: I am not convinced that the present is a suitable time for making any representations on these matters.

Mr. SAMUEL: Would the hon. Gentleman consider it a suitable opportunity when Brazil comes here and asks to borrow our money again?

Mr. GILLETT: I have considered that point, but I doubt very much whether that would be at all a suitable opportunity.

DENMARK.

Mr. A. M. SAMUEL: 25.
asked the Secretary to the Overseas Trade Department whether his Department has on its own initiative yet made arrangements either to set on foot negotiations for bringing together British manufacturers and Danish exporters who send their products to Britain or, alternatively, to send a trade mission to Denmark?

Mr. GILLETT: Yes, Sir; my Department have brought the importance of the Danish market to the notice of British manufacturers. The question of the desirability of sending a trade mission to Denmark is under consideration.

Mr. SAMUEL: Can the hon. Gentleman take any steps to set up a conference between himself and representatives of the Danish exporters, and is he not aware that there is a good deal of Anglo-Danish trade awaiting development?

Mr. GILLETT: The matter has been under my own personal attention and is still.

ELECTRICAL DEVELOPMENT, YUGOSLAVIA.

Mr. HANNON: 26.
asked the Secretary to the Overseas Trade Department if his attention has been called to the pending publication of an electrification law in Yugoslavia; if he is aware that this law contemplates certain concessions for the attraction of foreign capital such as freedom from taxation and reduced railway rates, as well as monopolies over specified areas; and if encouragement will be given to the British electrical industry to participate in such new development as may take place?

Mr. GILLETT: The answers to the first and second parts of the question are in the affirmative. With regard to
the third part of the question, the hon. Member can rest assured that everything possible will be done with a view to obtaining orders for British goods.

Mr. HANNON: Will the hon. Gentleman communicate with the Commercial Attaché at Belgrade on the subject in order to keep the Department in touch with any developments that may take place?

Mr. GILLETT: If the hon. Member has any point on which he thinks it would be an advantage for me to do so, I will willingly consider it.

FINLAND.

Mr. HANNON: 27.
asked the Secretary to the Overseas Trade Department whether any special measures are being adopted by His Majesty's Government for the development of trade between Great Britain and Finland; if he is aware that a recent Finnish loan floated in London has been wholly employed in the purchase of manufactured articles from other countries; that the large Finnish co-operative concerns are virtually boycotting British goods; and if he will take steps to establish a more friendly understanding with trade interests in Finland?

Mr. GILLETT: A Commercial Secretary will shortly be appointed to Finland. His appointment will I trust lead to a further development of trade with that country and a closer relationship between Great Britain and Finland. The answer to the second part of the question is in the affirmative, but I have no information on the subject raised in the third part. I will, however, have the matter looked into.

Mr. HANNON: Would the hon. Gentleman or his Department see that in the case of a loan such as that which is instanced in my question a condition should be inserted whereby the money lent by this country should be employed in the purchase of commodities in this country?

Mr. GILLETT: I am doubtful whether that would be possible or practicable.

Mr. HANNON: Will the hon. Gentleman examine the case?

Mr. GILLETT: I am not convinced that it is desirable to do so.

Mr. A. M. SAMUEL: Why did not the hon. Gentleman, before the loan was raised in England, do the very thing which he proposes to do now?

Mr. GILLETT: I am not proposing to do that. My information is that the goods had already been bought, and the loan was raised afterwards.

Mr. SAMUEL: Then it comes to this, that we are finding money to buy—

Mr. SPEAKER: Captain Cazalet.

CANADA (RUSSIAN ANTHRACITE).

Sir NEWTON MOORE: 65.
asked the President of the Board of Trade whether he has any information as to the sale of Russian anthracite coal to Canadian importers; the period and tonnage involved; and, if so, to what extent this will displace Welsh coal?

The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the BOARD OF TRADE (Mr. W. R. Smith): I would refer the hon. Member to the reply given on 25th March to the hon. Member for Lancaster (Mr. Ramsbotham), of which I am sending him a copy. I have no further information.

Lieut.-Colonel Sir FREDERICK HALL: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that there are supposed to be 25,000 tons of this anthracite already sold? Is his Department aware of the fact and, if so, cannot they give me any reply to my question?

Mr. SMITH: I have no further information beyond the answer given on the 25th.

Sir F. HALL: Does not the hon. Gentleman think it advisable that his Department should be conversant with what is taking place with regard to the export of coal to our own Colonies?

Sir N. MOORE: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that this coal is produced under sweated conditions at wages of a rouble a day, which is equivalent to 9d., and, if so, will he advise the Government accordingly?

Mr. SMITH: Those points are not contained in the question on the Paper.

IRON AND STEEL (IMPORTS).

Mr. A. M. SAMUEL: 64.
asked the President of the Board of Trade if he
will state the tonnage of imported raw iron and steel for the 14 months 1st January, 1929, to 28th February, 1930; and the approximate aggregate number of men and boys required to produce that tonnage through its various stages calculated on the basis of the British census of production?

Mr. W. R. SMITH: The answer to the first part of the question includes a table of figures, and will be printed in the OFFICIAL REPORT. I regret that the information available from the census of production does not suffice for the calculation suggested in the second part of the question.

Mr. SAMUEL: Would the hon. Gentleman contradict a suggestion that the import of raw iron and steel represented last year the import of the work of 100,000 men and boys, and, in view of the heavy unemployment in the iron and steel industry, will he convey the answer to this question to the Lord Privy Seal?

Following is the answer:

The following table shows the total quantities of the undermentioned descriptions of crude iron and steel imported into Great Britain and Northern Ireland, registered during the period 1st January, 1929, to 28th February, 1930:

Description.
1st January, 1929, to 28th February, 1930.



Tons.


Pig iron
61,933


Ferro-alloys
35,146


Ingots, other than of special steel
46,490


Blooms, billets, slabs, other than of special steel:



Iron
6,658


Steel
697,213


Sheet bars and tinplate bars
513,812


Special steels
3,475


Total
1,464,727

CUSTOMS SURTAX AND IMPORT RESTRICTIONS, AUSTRALIA.

Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHY: 76.
asked the Under-Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs whether he is now in a position to make any statement about the
new Australian tariffs and prohibitions on certain imports; and whether any representations were made to the Australian Government?

Mr. GILLETT: I have been asked to reply. My information generally confirms that which has appeared in the Press. A Resolution passed by the Commonwealth House of Representatives on the 3rd April imposed a surtax of 50 per cent. of the duty payable under the Tariff on certain scheduled goods. A Proclamation issued on the 4th April prohibited the importation of various goods on another schedule except under licence, but the Government have authorised the import annually of certain of these goods to the extent of 50 per cent. of the quantities imported during the 12 months ended 31st March last. Some goods appear on both these Schedules. Full details based on cabled information received by the High Commissioner for the Commonwealth of Australia in London will be published in the forthcoming issue of the "Board of Trade Journal." Goods exported from the countries of export prior to the 4th April are exempted from both Customs surtax and import licence requirement. The reply to the second part of the question is in the negative.

Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHY: Can my hon. Friend say whether, in view of the very serious effect that this may have on British trade, any representations are to be made?

Mr. GILLETT: That matter is being considered by my right hon. Friend the President of the Board of Trade.

Mr. A. M. SAMUEL: Is that one of the matters he considered at the Geneva Tariff Conference?

Mr. GILLETT: No doubt my right hon. Friend will himself be prepared to make a statement.

Major McKENZIE WOOD: Is this one of the first fruits of Empire Free Trade?

CHINA (SITUATION).

Sir KINGSLEY WOOD: 11.
asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he can state the present position in Peking; whether he has now received any account of the sack by Red troops of
Yuanchow-Ki, in the course of which two British missionaries were carried off; and what is the present position there?

The SECRETARY of STATE for FOREIGN AFFAIRS (Mr. Arthur Henderson): On the 3rd instant a former Counsellor of the Chinese Foreign Office called on His Majesty's Minister and stated that he had been appointed by General Yen Hsi-shan to be the head of the Foreign Affairs Bureau of the Commander-in-Chief and had been instructed to communicate to Sir Miles Lampson a telegram received from General Yen. The telegram stated that General Yen had assumed office as the Commander-in-Chief of the National forces, and announced a punitive campaign the object of which was to promote the peaceful unification of the country. He declared that foreign life and property would be protected in all territory occupied by his troops, and requested that foreigners would refrain from lending moral or material support to his opponents. As regards the situation at Yuanchow, I have received no further information beyond that given to the right hon. Gentleman in reply to his question on Wednesday last.

Mr. DAY: Can my right hon. Friend say whether the statement is correct that two missionaries were captured by Red troops?

Mr. HENDERSON: No. I have had no information to that effect.

Mr. COCKS: Is it not clear that these so-called Red troops are really members of the Chinese United Empire party?

Mr. CHARLES WILLIAMS: Will the British Government continue to be neutral in these quasi-military operations in China?

Sir K. WOOD: Does the right hon. Gentleman think there is any matter for amusement that two British missionaries have been dealt with as described?

BRITISH SUBJECTS, UNITED STATES (REPATRIATION).

Mr. ALLEN: 12.
asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether, in view of the dismissal of many British and Canadian subjects from employment in the United States of America on the
ground of their British nationality, and seeing that no provision is made for unemployment relief in America, he will instruct His Majesty's Consuls in the United States of America to provide facilities for all dismissed men who are without resources to return to their countries of origin?

Mr. A. HENDERSON: Consular officers have standing authority to repatriate in suitable cases at public expense any British subject, who is a native of Great Britain or Northern Ireland and becomes destitute in his consular district, provided that there are no means of assisting the case locally. British subjects belonging to Canada can be dealt with similarly provided that the sanction of the Canadian Government is obtained. I would like to take the opportunity of stating that I have no information to show that British subjects have been treated any less favourably that other foreigners in the course of the dismissals referred to by the hon. Member.

Mr. ALLEN: Will the right hon. Gentleman make inquiries to ascertain whether it is not a fact that British subjects were dismissed owing to their nationality, and before Americans who were employed by the same firms, and will he publish the names of the firms who carried out these dismissals, in order flat we in this country may boycott the firms who have been victimising British subjects?

Mr. HENDERSON: I must take the latter part of the supplementary question into very serious consideration.

EGYPT (TREATY NEGOTIATIONS).

Captain P. MACDONALD: 14.
asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he intends to make a statement respecting the progress of Anglo-Egyptian negotiations before the House adjourns for the Easter recess?

Mr. A. HENDERSON: I am not yet able to say definitely when I shall be in a position to make a statement on these important negotiations. I am glad, however, to have this opportunity of saying that good progress has already been made in the discussion of the proposals.

Captain MACDONALD: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware of the concern felt in Anglo-Egyptian commercial circles at the absence from this Conference of anybody with a special knowledge of the police force in Egypt?

Mr. HENDERSON: I am afraid if I had to listen to all these criticisms we would never finish.

Mr. SMITHERS: 17.
asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs if there has been any change in the personnel of the Egyptian delegation since their arrival in this country?

Mr. HENDERSON: No, Sir.

Mr. SMITHERS: May I ask whether any member of this delegation was implicated in the murder of Sir Lee Stack?

Mr. HENDERSON: That question does not arise from the answer. I gave the names of the delegation to the House, and the only question I have to answer to-day is as to whether any change has taken place in the personnel and that is the only answer I am going, to give.

Lieut.-Commander KENAORTHY: On a point of Order. Is there any way of preventing hon. Members from making personal attacks on members of a friendly delegation that comes to the country? Is that in accordance with Rules and usages of the House?

Mr. SPEAKER: I do ray best to prevent supplementary questions becoming out of order, and, if the House will help me, I shall be able to succeed better.

Mr. THURTLE: We shall be glad to help you, Sir.

LEAGUE OF NATIONS COVENANT (ARTICLE; 13).

Mr. GODFREY LOCKER-LAMPSON: 15.
asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether any discussions have taken place during the last 12 months, either in the Assembly or at the Council of the League of Nations, in regard to the interpretation to be placed upon Article 16 of the Covenant?

Mr. A. HENDERSON: No, Sir.

Mr. LOCKER-LAMPSON: Will the right hon. Gentleman undertake to make
no bilateral agreement with any other Power in respect to this matter without first of all submitting it to this House?

Mr. HENDERSON: No, I am afraid I cannot give any such undertaking.

Sir K. WOOD: Will the right hon. Gentleman give an undertaking that before any such arrangement which affects the position of this country is made he will obtain the assent of this House?

Mr. HENDERSON: That will depend on circumstances. I have to keep in mind that when the last arrangement was made, known as the Locarno Treaty, the assent of this House was not obtained.

Sir K. WOOD: Does the right hon. Gentleman remember how he complained, and is he now going to say that this country should enter into what must be an obligation without Parliament being consulted?

Mr. HENDERSON: No, I am not saying anything of the kind.

Captain EDEN: Will the right hon. Gentleman take note of the grave seriousness of suggesting any bilateral agreement in a matter in which other countries are interested?

Mr. HENDERSON: Any bilateral agreement would be submitted to this House for ratification.

Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHY: 18.
asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether, in any proposals made to the French Government with regard to the interpretation of Article 16 of the Covenant, consideration is being given to the object of effecting an agreed reduction in the French tonnage demands at the present Naval Conference?

Commander BELLAIRS: 46.
asked the Prime Minister, in view of the public anxiety as to the Mediterranean negotiations and as to certain interpretations of our war obligations under the League of Nations Covenant, whether he can now make a full statement on the subject?

Mr. LOCKER-LAMPSON: 48 and 49.
asked the Prime Minister (1) whether, before he comes to any decision in regard to the interpretation to be placed on Article 16 of the Covenant of the League of Nations, he will lay the matter before the Council of the League;
(2) whether he is consulting the other signatories of the Covenant of the League of Nations in regard to the question of the interpretation of Article 16?

30. Captain CROOKSHANK: asked the Prime Minister whether he has consulted the German Government with regard to the question of the interpretation of Article 16 of the Covenant; and, if so, whether or not the question of interpretation in any way affects the terms of the Locarno Treaties?

51. Mr. HURD: asked the Prime Minister whether he is keeping the Governments of the Dominions who are signatories to the Covenant of the League of Nations fully informed as to the discussions now proceeding regarding the interpretation of that Covenant; and whether he will undertake to secure their assent to any altered interpretation?

Captain EDEN: 52 and 53.
asked the Prime Minister (1) whether he can state what interpretations of Article 16 of the Covenant are at present under consideration; and by whom;
(2) whether any amendment or interpretation of the treaties of Locarno or of the annexes thereto is at present under consideration by any of the delegations at the Five Power Naval Conference?

Major ROSS: 54 and 55.
asked the Prime Minister (I) whether the interpretation of Article 16 of the Covenant has yet been decided, and in what direction has it been decided;
(2) whether, in view of his declaration on 23rd December, 1929, that the question of naval policy as apart from naval strength will not be considered at the Naval Conference, he will say what is the attitude of the British delegation to the discussions which are taking place on the interpretation of Article 16 of the Covenant of the League of Nations?

Mr. HENDERSON: I have nothing at present to add to the replies returned in this House by the Prime Minister on the 1st of April, and by the Chancellor of the Exchequer on the 2nd of April. The Prime Minister hopes, however, to be able to make a full statement at an early date; and, meanwhile, he trusts that the House will continue for a little longer to exercise the patience which it has hitherto shown throughout these long
and delicate discussions. He is, of course, in close touch with the delegates of the Dominions and India to the Naval Conference.

Mr. LOCKER-LAMPSON: Will the right hon. Gentleman undertake that before arriving at any bilateral agreement in regard to Article 16 of the Covenant the matter shall be laid before the Council of the League?

Mr. HENDERSON: There is no intention of arranging for anything that will be in contradiction of the arrangements that have already been entered into.

Mr. LOCKER-LAMPSON: In view of the unsatisfactory nature of the reply, I beg to give notice that I shall ask leave to move the Adjournment of the House.

Captain EDEN: Does the right hon. Gentleman appreciate that there can be—

Mr. SPEAKER: The hon. and gallant Member had better defer that till later.

Commander BELLAIRS: 19.
asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, in view of the Kellogg Pact being of more recent date and embracing almost all nations, whether the Government will propose that it should supersede those parts of the League of Nations Covenant that envisage or contemplate war to which neither the United States of America nor Russia is a party?

Mr. HENDERSON: As the hon. and gallant Member is no doubt aware, in virtue of a resolution passed by the last Assembly of the League of Nations, a committee recently met at Geneva to consider the question of amending certain Articles of the Covenant of the League of Nations in order to bring it into harmony with the Kellogg Pact. The amendments proposed by this committee are embodied in their report, a copy of which has been placed in the Library of the House. The report will come up for discussion at the Assembly in September next.

Commander BELLAIRS: Will the right hon. Gentleman bear in mind that the Kellogg Pact does not envisage or contemplate war, whereas, certainly, the Articles of the Covenant of the League of Nations do?

Mr. HENDERSON: That is exactly what the committee is looking into.

Oral Answers to Questions — RUSSIA.

RELIGIOUS SITUATION.

Sir K. WOOD: 16.
asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs if he has had any recent Communication from the British Ambassador as to whether the decree of the Soviet Government of 8th April, 1929, in relation to religious associations, still remains in fore?

Mr. A. HENDERSON: Nothing has been received from His Majesty's Ambassador in Moscow to show that the decree is not in force. As I informed the hon. Member for Gravesend (Mr. Albery) on the 17th March, the decree, so far as I am aware, is still in force.

Sir K. WOOD: Having regard to the fact that this decree is still in operation, and to the statements recently made by the Archbishop of Canterbury and other eminent people, does the right hon. Gentleman still maintain that there is no persecution of religion in Russia?

Mr. HENDERSON: I do not know that I have ever maintained that.

Sir K. WOOD: Did not the right hon. Gentleman say to me that he preferred to call it pressure, and not persecution?

Mr. BROCKWAY: Has the right hon. Gentleman seen the letter in the "Daily Herald" by G. B. Essipof[...]?

Mr. SPEAKER: Mr. Smithers.

Captain MARGESSON: 20.
asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether the Anglican Church in Moscow is now available if wanted for religious worship?

Mr. HENDERSON: I am making further inquiries upon the point which the hon. and gallant Member has raised.

Oral Answers to Questions — NAVAL AND MILITARY PENSIONS AND GRANTS.

INSTITUTIONAL TREATMENT (R. WILLEY, GRIMSBY).

Mr. WOMERSLEY: 22.
asked the Minister of Pensions if he will have special inquiries made into the case of
Mr. Robert Willey, of 114, Stanley Street, Grimsby, with a view to this man's claim for treatment in a Ministry of Pensions hospital, under the regulations as set out in Circular No. 70, entitled applications for pension in respect of disablement claimed more than seven years after discharge, being further considered?

The MINISTER of PENSIONS (Mr. F. O. Roberts): This case has been carefully considered in the light of all the available evidence and the report of a recent medical examination, and I am advised that the man's present condition of disablement cannot be certified to be the result of his war service. In the circumstances the Ministry has no authority to provide the treatment required.

Mr. WOMERSLEY: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that this man was wounded twice in France; that for 6½ years he had to be treated for discharge from the wounds, which included small pieces of bone; that the medical report is to the effect that his present disease can have been caused by a diseased bone in the body; further, that he was admitted to a Ministry of Pensions hospital in 1927 and discharged and has been ill ever since; and, in view of these circumstances, will the right hon. Gentleman have a further examination made by independent doctors?

Mr. ROBERTS: . The report to which I refer is from a recent medical examination, but, if my hon. Friend will give me the additional facts with which he is acquainted, I will have them carefully looked into.

REVIEWED CASES.

Mr. MACLEAN: 23.
asked the Minister of Pensions whether he can state the number of cases where pensions have been reviewed under the Correction of Errors Regulation in each of the past five years; and the number of such cases where an increase of pension has been awarded in the same years?

Mr. ROBERTS: Cases which have been reviewed and an increase of pension awarded numbered about 1,800 in each of the financial years 1926 and 1927; about 1,600 in 1928, 1,100 in 1929, and about 1,500 in the financial year just ended.

Mr. MACLEAN: The right hon. Gentleman has not dealt with the last part of the question, dealing with the number that have been considered as well as the number that have received particular grants.

Mr. ROBERTS: That information does not appear to be available, but I will look into the point raised by the hon. Member.

Mr. ERNEST BROWN: Can the right hon. Gentleman make the information available to the House, because there is a lot of feeling about the working of the Awards Department at the moment?

Mr. ROBERTS: Certainly.

Oral Answers to Questions — GOVERNMENT DEPARTMENTS.

CONSULAR OFFICERS.

Mr. DAY: 24.
asked the Secretary to the Overseas Trade Department, whether he can state the number of British unsalaried consular officers who are not British subjects?

Mr. GILLETT: There are 145 unsalaried Consular officers who are not British subjects.

Mr. DAY: Has the hon. Gentleman received any complaints that these unsalaried Consular officers do not receive the same sympathy and support from British traders as salaried officers?

Mr. GILLETT: I have heard it suggested that occasionally they have other interests which prevent them giving more time to British interests.

Mr. DAY: Can the hon. Gentleman say how many of them devote their whole time to consular duties?

Mr. GILLETT: I cannot say without notice.

Mr. DOUGLAS HACKING: Will the hon. Gentleman see that when a British subject is available a foreigner will not be appointed?

Mr. GILLETT: That has always been our custom.

DUCHY OF LANCASTER.

Sir NICHOLAS GRATTAN-DOYLE: 71.
asked the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster whether he will give the names
of the members of the council which advises him respecting his duties and state the terms and periods of their appointments?

The CHANCELLOR of the DUCHY of LANCASTER (Sir Oswald Mosley): The Council of the Duchy of Lancaster consists of the Receiver-General of the Duchy, Sir Frederick Ponsonby, and the Attorney-General of the Duchy, Sir Herbert Cunliffe, who are ex-officio members, Lord Bledisloe, Lord Buckmaster, Lord Leconfield, Lord Lovat and Sir Herbert Mitchell. Members of the Council, not being ex-officio members, are appointed under Royal Sign Manual Warrant. The more important questions of policy arising out of the administration of the Duchy estates for which I am responsible, are from time to time laid before the Council for their consideration and advice.

Mr. BRACKEN: Is the hon. Baronet not aware that Lord Bledisloe is on his way to take up the appointment of Governor-General of New Zealand?

Sir O. MOSLEY: I am aware of that situation. Under the terms of Lord Bledisloe's appointment, I do not deem it my duty to tender any advice.

Sir K. WOOD: Have any of the Members of this Council assisted the hon. Baronet to frame the Memorandum on "How to solve the unemployment problem"?

Captain BOURNE: 72.
asked the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster whether appointments to fill vacancies that may occur amongst the staff of his Department are made through the Civil Service Commissioners?

Sir O. MOSLEY: Appointments to the staff of the Duchy of Lancaster, the expenses and salaries of which are not chargeable to the Consolidated Fund, are for this reason not governed by the rules affecting entrance to the Civil Service, but are made at the discretion of the Chancellor. The only appointment to the Duchy staff which I have been called upon to make was made through the Civil Service Commissioners.

Sir F. HALL: Are special facilities granted to the "P" men to enable them to became established civil servants? Are
they considered at all? Apparently, the hon. Baronet is not aware what permanent "P" ex-service men?

Sir O. MOSLEY: Certainly. they will have the usual consideration.

Sir F. HALL: We want more than the usual consideration.

TAX OFFICES, BIRKENSEAD.

Mr. EGAN (for Mr. GRAHAM WHITE): 58 and 59.
asked the First Com missioners of Works (1) whether he is aware that the offices provided for His Majesty's Inspector of Taxes and staffs at the Birkenhead third and fourth districts, at 12, Hamilton Square, Birkenhead, are administratively inconvenient, owing to 24 officers being housed in no fewer than nine rooms on four floors, and are defective as regards heating, lighting, lavatory acommodation, and absence of lift; and whether it is proposed to obtain alternative accommodation of a more suitable nature;
(2) whether he is aware that the office accommodation provided for His Majesty's Inspector of Taxes and staff at Birkenhead, second district, situated at 61, Hamilton Square, Birkenhead, is unsatisfactory owing to the staff being scattered in small rooms on four floors, with consequent difficulties both as regards internal supervision and interviewing of callers; and whether it is proposed to secure alternative accommodation of a more satisfactory nature?

Mr. LANSBURY: I am aware that the premises referred to do rot conform to modern requirements, and efforts have been made for some time to secure suitable alternative accommodation. Negotiations, which I hope will result in the provision of suitable premises, are now in hand and are being actively pursued.

IMPERIAL INSTITUIE (SCHOOL CHILDREN).

Captain CAZALET: 28.
asked the Secretary to the Overseas Trade Department how many different schools visited the Imperial Institute, and be total number of school children who came in those groups, during the last three years calculated to the most recent convenient date?

Mr. GILLETT: The numbers of school classes and children attending were as follow:





Classes.
Children.


1927
…
…
2,118
52,950


1928
…
…
3,208
80,200


1929
…
…
3,060
76,500


Of these numbers, approximately 84 per cent. were from elementary schools, 13 per cent. from secondary schools, and the balance from geographical societies, technical institutions, etc.

Oral Answers to Questions — AGRICULTURE.

FOOT-AND-MOUTH DISEASE, SCOTLAND.

Mr. DAY: 29.
asked the Minister of Agriculture the number of actions that have been brought under the Diseases of Animals Act, 1927, for failure to report outbreaks of foot-and-mouth disease in Scotland; and whether in any of these actions the maximum penalty has been imposed?

The MINISTER of AGRICULTURE (Mr. Noel Buxton): Only one action for failing to report with all practicable speed an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease has been brought in Scotland since the passing of the Diseases of Animals Act, 1927. The maximum penalty of £50 was not imposed, the owner having been fined £5 with the alternative of 20 days' imprisonment.

INJURIOUS WEEDS, BARTON STACEY.

Mr. BENSON: 32.
asked the Minister of Agriculture whether the occupier of certain lands at Barton Stacey complied with the notices served on him in July last to cut and destroy injurious weeds growing on the lands; and, if not, what is the present position of the matter?

Mr. N. BUXTON: Six notices were served on a Mr. McCreagh, the person who was believed to be entitled to the occupation of the lands in question. These notices were not complied with, and prosecutions were instituted for offences under the Corn Production Acts (Repeal) Act, 1921, before the local Justices, as a result of which a fine of £20 was inflicted on each of six summonses. The Defendant appealed against the convictions on points of law, but his appeals were dismissed with costs by a Divisional
Court on the 26th March last, and the convictions will consequently stand.

Mr. BENSON: Can the right hon. Gentleman say whether the nuisance has been abated?

Mr. BUXTON: If action had to be taken in regard to weeds this year, it certainly would be taken in spite of the expenditure.

Viscount LYMINGTON: Can the right hon. Gentleman assure us that action will be taken this summer in time to prevent the weeds from spreading all over the countryside?

Mr. BUXTON: Certainly.

CREDITS.

Captain P. MACDONALD: 33.
asked the Minister of Agriculture what amount of long-term credits has been advanced to date under the provisions of the Agricultural Credits Act, 1928?

Mr. N. BUXTON: As the reply contains a number of figures, I propose, with the permission of the hon. and gallant Member, to circulate it in the OFFICIAL REPORT.

Following is the reply:

Under Part I of the Agricultural Credits Act, 1928, the Agricultural Mortgage Corporation had advanced, up to the close of business on 31st March, 1930, the following loans:




£


Loans on mortgage (1,372)
…
4,185,640


Improvement Loans (20)
…
8,770




£4,194,410

In addition, the Directors of the Corporation had approved loans, subject to the satisfactory completion of the formalities, as follows:




£


Loans on mortgage (287)
…
1,120,605


Improvement loans (22)
…
12,991




£1,133,596

Mr. BLINDELL: 35.
asked the Minister of Agriculture whether he is aware that the Agricultural Mortgage Corporation have refused to consider applications for loans under Part I of the Agricultural Credits Act on the ground that Mort-
gages involving large sums of money cannot be entertained; whether under the Act any limit is fixed as to the amount which may be advanced to any person or company; and what action he proposes to take in order that every application may be considered on its merits?

Mr. N. BUXTON: Part I of the Agricultural Credits Act, 1928, fixes no limit as to the amount which may be advanced to any person or company. The decision as to whether a loan is granted by the Agricultural Mortgage Corporation and the amount of such loan, are matters entirely within the discretion of the Directors.

Mr. BLINDELL: Seeing that no limit has been fixed in the Agricultural Credits Act with regard to the amount that may be advanced, may I ask whether the Department or the right hon. Gentleman has any power to instruct the Mortgage Corporation to give consideration to any application that is made irrespective of the amount involved?

Mr. BUXTON: No, Sir, the Minister has no power to interfere.

Mr. BLINDELL: Seeing that the sum of £750,000 of public money has been granted to this Corporation free of interest, are we to understand that the Minister of Agriculture has no control whatever over the money once he has parted with it?

Mr. BUXTON: We are bound by the terms of the Act of 1927.

Mr. BLINDELL: Can the Minister of Agriculture take any steps that would ensure that due consideration would be given to every application

Mr. BUXTON: No, Sir, I do not think the Act gives us any power in that direction.

NATIONAL MARK SCHEME (BEEF AND FLOUR).

Sir N. GRATTAN-DOYLE: 34.
asked the Minister of Agriculture in what areas the national mark scheme has been introduced in respect of beef and flout?

Mr. N. BUXTON: The national mark scheme for beef is, at present, limited to the London and Birmingham consuming areas. The national mark flour scheme is
operated by some 150 millers and flour packers, and supplies are available in most parts of the country.

Sir N. GRATTAN-DOYLE: Will the right hon. Gentleman consider the extension of this scheme to other districts?

Mr. BUXTON: Yes, Sir; we are constantly considering the matter, and we hope to extend it.

Mr. C. WILLIAMS: When is the right hon. Gentleman going to get any one of the larger northern towns—

IMPORTED GERMAN CEREALS.

Mr. THORNE: 36.
asked the Minister of Agriculture whether any steps have been taken to ascertain the destination of dumped German wheat and oats; and the percentage which is used in the manufacture of bread-making flours by the millers and the percentage used by farmers and poultry farmers as food for stock and poultry?

Mr. N. BUXTON: Special inquiry regarding the ultimate destination of German wheat and oats imported into this country has not been made As regards wheat, however, of which the imports from Germany in recent months have been negligible, so far as I am aware the bulk has been purchased by millers, but I am not able to say how far it has been used for bread-making flour. As regards oats, I understand that, of recent imports, practically none has been used for the manufacture of oatmeal. It may be assumed, therefore, that the bulk has been used for feeding to livestock.

CORN PRODUCTION ACTS (SUBSIDIES).

Mr. de ROTHSCHILD: 37.
asked the Minister of Agriculture the amount paid in subsidies in England and Wales under the Corn Production Acts during each year they were in operation?

Mr. N. BUXTON: Payments in connection with the guarantee of minimum prices under the Corn Production Acts were made only in respect of wheat and oats produced in 1921, and amounted, so far as England and Wales were concerned, to a total sum of £13,983,135.

Brigadier-General CLIFTON BROWN: Can the right hon. Gentleman say how much of that amount was for oats, and how much for wheat?

Mr. BUXTON: Perhaps the hon. and gallant Member will put down a question with regard to that point.

CROP REPORTS.

Mr. BLINDELL: 40.
asked the Minister of Agriculture whether he has received complaints as to the accuracy of reports supplied by the Ministry's crop reporters and published by his Department; whether this has been investigated; and will he state the procedure adopted in order to ensure that every report published by the Ministry as to stocks held by farmers is substantially correct?

Mr. N. BUXTON: As regards the general information furnished by crop reporters, criticisms are occasionally made, and invariably receive the fullest investigation. Generally speaking, I am satisfied that the information provided by crop reporters, and published by the Ministry, is substantially correct, but, if the hon. Member has any specific case in mind, I shall be glad to give the matter careful consideration. If the hon. Member's question refers solely to the estimates of stocks remaining on farms on 1st January and 1st April, I am not aware of any complaints as to their accuracy. Every care is taken to ensure that the crop reporters employed are fully qualified to submit reliable estimates.

TITHE, BARTON STACEY.

Viscount LYMINGTON: 41.
asked the Minister of Agriculture the acreage of land in the parish of Barton Stacey, in Hampshire, upon which tithe is not being paid?

Mr. N. BUXTON: The Ministry has no jurisdiction and is not concerned with the collection of annual tithe rent-charge, but I am informed by Queen Anne's Bounty, the tithe owners, that tithe rent-charge is not being paid in respect of some 1,500 acres in the parish of Barton Stacey, while the tithe rent-charge on a further 600 acres is in arrear and is being recovered with difficulty after application to the County Court.

Viscount LYMINGTON: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the uncultivated land in the parish of Barton Stacey largely coincides with the area upon which tithe is not being paid, and that this is an instance of the deterrent
effect of tithe on the cultivation of arable land?

Mr. BUXTON: I am aware of that.

POTATOES (PRICES).

Mr. RAMSBOTHAM: 44.
asked the Minister of Agriculture whether his attention has been called to the present price of potatoes in Lancashire, which has fallen to the lowest figure ever recorded; and whether, as this price does not repay cultivation, he proposes to take any steps, and, if so, what, to guarantee an economic price to the growers?

Mr. N. BUXTON: I am fully aware of the very low prices ruling for potatoes in Lancashire and throughout the country. While it is not part of the Government's policy to guarantee a price for potatoes, I am of opinion that the present difficulties can largely be avoided in future if growers will organise on national lines for the orderly marketing of the crop, for securing the general adoption of the statutory grades, and for the disposal of below-grade and surplus potatoes, and I shall be most happy to provide any advice or assistance in my power to growers and merchants in the task of improving the position.

Mr. RAMSBOTHAM: Will the right hon. Gentleman consider the application to this crop of the economic principles contained in the Coal Mines Bill?

MARKETING.

Mr. BLINDELL: 56.
asked the Minister of Agriculture the result of any negotiations between his Department and the National Farmers' Union relative to an agreed scheme for the marketing of agricultural produce, and particularly the marketing of potatoes; and whether he is now prepared to make an announcement upon the details of the Government's marketing proposals?

Mr. N. BUXTON: My Department is in close and constant touch with the National Farmers' Union on marketing questions, but, apart from proposals for extending the application of the national mark, no negotiations have recently taken place with that body in regard to any agreed scheme for the marketing of agricultural produce. The answer to the last part of the question is in the negative.

Mr. BLINDELL: When may the House expect the details as to marketing proposals with regard to agricultural produce to be put before them?

Mr. BUXTON: I am not able to say.

Mr. WISE: When does the Minister propose to lay before the House his own agricultural policy?

Mr. SPEAKER: That does not arise on this question.

GOVERNMENT POLICY.

Colonel HOWARD-BURY (for Lieut.-Colonel HENEAGE): 31.
asked the Minister of Agriculture when the Government intend to announce their agricultural policy?

Mr. GUIBELL: 38.
asked the Minister of Agriculture when he will be in a position to make an announcement of Government policy dealing with the immediate difficulties experienced in all parts of the country in the industry of agriculture?

Mr. N. BUXTON: I would refer the hon. Members to the answer given to a similar question by the hon. Member for Eye (Mr. Granville) on the 3rd April, of which I am sending them a copy.

Colonel HOWARD-BURY: Will it be a correct deduction to say that the right hon. Gentleman is going to make his statement at the Greek Kalends?

Lieut. - Commander KENWORTHY: The Ides of March.

IMPORTED POTATOES (COLORADO BKEIPLE).

Colonel HOWARD-BURY (for Lieut.-Colonel HENEAGE): 42.
asked the Minister of Agriculture whether potatoes are being imported from any country where there is Colorado beetle; and, if so, will he name the countries?

Mr. N. BUXTON: I would refer the hon. and gallant Member to the reply given by the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry on the 20th February to a similar question by the hon. Member for Dartford (Mr. Mills). I am sending the hon. and gallant Member a copy of the reply in question.

MERCHANDISE MARKS ACT (PROSECUTIONS).

Colonel HOWARD-BURY (for Lieut.-Colonel HENEAGE): 43.
asked the
Minister of Agriculture if, in cases where definite infringements of the Merchandise Marks Act have been traced, prosecutions are instituted by his Department; and if he can give the number of prosecutions during this year?

Mr. N. BUXTON: So far as the Merchandise Marks Acts of 1887 and 1894 are concerned, the answer to the first part of the question is in the affirmative, in cases where the necessary evidence is available. The enforcement of foodstuffs Marking Orders under the Merchandise Marks Act of 1926 normally rests with local authorities, who are given special power of entry, which the Ministry does not possess. There has been one prosecution by the Ministry this year under the 1887 and 1894 Acts and a conviction was obtained. A number of successful prosecutions have also been taken by local authorities under the Act of 1926.

RIVER NENE (POLLUTION).

Mr. PERRY: 30.
asked the Minister of Agriculture if he has received any complaints of damage to fisheries and to agriculturists engaged in the raising of stock by the pollution of the River Nene; and, if so, what action he proposes to take in the matter?

Mr. N. BUXTON: I have not received from agriculturists engaged in the raising of stock any complaints of damage caused by the pollution of the River Nene. Complaints as to damage caused to fisheries by such pollution have been received, the latest laving been made in November last. Power to institute legal proceedings in respect of pollution is vested not in the Ministry but in sanitary authorities under the Rivers Pollution Prevention Acts and in Fishery Boards under the Salmon and Freshwater Fisheries Act, 1923. I understand that the Nene and Welland Fishery Board have instituted proceedings in respect of the pollution of the River Nene, and that the case is down for hearing on 8th April.

Mr. C. WILLIAMS: Is not the pollution of rivers really a matter for the Minister of Health, and does the Minister of Health take action?

Mr. BUXTON: So far as local authorities are involved, yes.

MARITIME LAW.

Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHY: 45.
asked the Prime Minister why it was agreed with one of the other Governments participating in the Naval Conference that the question of the right of visit and search and capture of private shipping and merchandise at sea should not be discussed at the Conference?

The PRIME MINISTER (Mr. Ramsay MacDonald): I think my hon. and gallant Friend will agree that, as foreseen, the subject matter already under discussion has proved sufficient for the duration of the Conference, and, further, that the Conference was not the place to settle it.

Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHY: Is my right hon. Friend aware that he has not quite answered my question? I asked why it was decided not to allow this matter to be raised?

Mr. HOLFORD KNIGHT: Arising out of the Prime Minister's reply, may I ask whether, in his opinion, the exclusion of this important matter has contributed to the success of the Conference?

The PRIME MINISTER: Undoubtedly, yes.

Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHY: My right hon. Friend has not answered my question.

HOUSE OF COMMONS (DIVISIONS).

Mr. PERRY: 47.
asked the Prime Minister if he will consider the appointment of a committee of this House for the purpose of inquiring into, and reporting upon, the possibility of introducing the new electrical voting apparatus which is to be tried in the French Chamber of Deputies for the purpose of recording divisions?

The PRIME MINISTER: I would prefer to defer the consideration of the appointment of a Committee for the purpose indicated, pending the result of certain inquiries which have been instituted into the nature of the apparatus concerned.

Mr. PERRY: In making these inquiries, will the Prime Minister consider the claim that is made that only a very small expenditure would be necessary to adapt the apparatus to the circumstances obtaining in this House?

The PRIME MINISTER: Perhaps my hon. Friend will be good enough to communicate with my right hon. Friend the First Commissioner of Works, who as a matter of fact will make the inquiries.

Lieut.-Commander KENWORTHY: [...] there not a greater need for automatic voters than for automatic apparatus?

Commander BELLAIRS: Is the Prime Minister aware that the French apparatus is dependent upon every Member having a place, which is very far from being the case in this House?

MARLBOROUGH HOUSE.

Mr. MACLEAN: 61.
asked the First Commissioner of Works the total cost of the alterations to Marlborough House?

Mr. LANSBURY: The total expenditure on reconditioning Marlborough House, including the garages and other outhouses, was approximately £20,500. Of this, approximately £8,000 might be ascribed to alterations and improvements, the balance being for general redecoration, external and internal repairs, rewiring, etc.

Mr. MACLEAN: Can my right hon. Friend inform us when this house is likely to be occupied?

Mr. LANSBURY: I have not any information on that subject.

PALACE OF WESTMINSTER (PICTURES).

Mr. HORRABIN: 62.
asked the First Commissioner of Works whether, now that it has been decided that the paintings by Mr. Frank Brangwyn, R.A., executed under the bequest of the late Earl of Iveagh should not be accepted for the Royal Gallery, he proposes to find some other position for these paintings in the Palace of Westminster?

Mr. LANSBURY: The offer made by the late Earl of Iveagh was to fill the vacant panels in the Royal Gallery of the House of Lords with paintings. No offer has been received to decorate any other portion of the Palace of Westminster.

Mr. HORRABIN: Does that mean that, in view of the discussion in another place,
the late Lord Iveagh's generosity and Mr. Brangwyn's genius are to be thrown away as far as this building is concerned?

Mr. LANSBURY: My hon. Friend, I think, has not appreciated the answer I have given. The only offer made by the late Lord Iveagh and his present trustees was an offer of paintings for the Royal Gallery, and no other offer has been made for consideration.

TRADE DISPUTES BILL.

Sir K. WOOD: 63.
asked the Attorney-General whether he proposes to introduce the Trade Disputes Bill before the Easter Recess; and when the terms of the Measure will be available to Members of the House?

The SOLICITOR - GENERAL (Sir James Melville): The answer to the first part of the question is in the negative, and, as to the second part, the terms of the Measure will be made available to Members of the House in the ordinary way.

Sir K. WOOD: Can the Solicitor-General say whether the Bill is completed and ready for printing?

The SOLICITOR-GENERAL: Yes, it is quite ready.

Sir K. WOOD: Then does not the Solicitor-General think that it would be a good idea that we should see this Bill and study it during the Easter Recess?

The SOLICITOR-GENERAL: The Bill has been printed, and will be available in the ordinary way for hon. Members to make themselves acquainted with it before the Second Reading.

Mr. THORNE: Is the Solicitor-General aware that when the Bill is placed before the House hon. Gentlemen opposite are going to move the rejection of it?

Mr. HACKING: Can the Solicitor-General say whether the Bill will be issued before Easter?

The SOLICITOR-GENERAL: I could not say whether it will be issued before Easter. I said that it would be available in the usual way for Members to make themselves acquainted with it before the Second Reading.

Sir K. WOOD: Why is this Bill being kept back? Why does the Solicitor-General conceal it?

Oral Answers to Questions — POST OFFICE.

TELEGRAPH SERVICE.

Major GLYN: 66.
asked the Postmaster-General whether, as one means of making the use of the telegraph service more popular, he will consider revising the Regulations so that an address consisting of two words or more, in addition to the name of the town, may count as one word when such words are shown in the official directories as being connected by hyphens?

The POSTMASTER-GENERAL (Mr. Lees-Smith): The Regulations provide that a combination of worth which is regularly hyphened shall count as one. If the hon. and gallant Member will let me know the cases he has in mind, I will inquire into them.

Major GLYN: Is it not a fact that in London and other cities there are many street addresses that consist of more than one word? It is surely detrimental that they are not included as one pennyworth.

Mr. LEES-SMITH: A word that is hyphened in the official directory is counted as one word.

Major GLYN: The House of Commons itself counts as 3d., I understand.

TELEPHONE SERVICE (RIRAL AREAS).

Major GLYN: 68.
asked the Postmaster-General how many new rural telephone exchanges have been opened within the past 12 months how many new subscribers have been added to the list; in how many villages or rural railway stations have call bone 3 been put up in the same period; what has been the cost of these works; and the anticipated. return on the money se expended?

Mr. LEES-SMITH: Dining the year ended 31st December, 1929, 165 new rural exchanges were opened. There was a net increase of 125,885 telephones throughout the Kingdom, of which 18,264 were connected to rural exchanges, and these included 3,312 new call offices established in villages and at rural railway stations. The cost of these works is not readily available as
a separate item, nor is the anticipated return; but there will be a substantial loss on the service in rural districts.

VEHICLES (FOREIGN MANUFACTURE).

Major GLYN: 69.
asked the Postmaster-General how many vehicles operated by his Department or by the contractors to the Post Office are of foreign manufacture; what is the number of vehicles, both vans and motor-cycle carriers, that have been purchased within the last year; and if all were made in this country?

Mr. LEES-SMITH: 5,251 motor vehicles of all kinds are at present operated by the Department. Of these, 4,293 are wholly British; 954 are British with the exception of certain parts representing about 2½ per cent. of their value, and four are foreign. I have no definite information as to vehicles operated by the Department's contractors, but I believe most of them to be British. 1,255 motor vehicles were purchased last year and all of them are British.

ROAD DISTURBANCE (CABLES).

Colonel HOWARD-BURY: 67.
asked the Postmaster-General whether, before laying cables under the public highway, he will consult with the Ministry of Transport so that a road that has just been resurfaced shall not be opened up again by his Department?

Mr. LEES-SMITH: Every endeavour is made to avoid the disturbance of recently resurfaced roads, and arrangements were initiated by the Post Office some years ago with the object of co-ordinating all works in public roads. In the London area information of impending Post Office works in all important thoroughfares is already forwarded to the Ministry of Transport annually.

Colonel HOWARD-BURY: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that this co-ordination is not working at all satisfactorily? The whole of Mount Street, which was resurfaced last year, is now pulled up again. Cannot he have some better form of coordination than exists to-day?

Mr. LEES-SMITH: Mount Street has not been re-surfaced since 1925.

Colonel HOWARD-BURY: It was all up last year.

Colonel HOWARD-BURY: 80.
asked the Minister of Transport whether, when he arranges for a road to be re-surfaced, he consults with the Postmaster-General as to whether he intends to lay cables under the road; whether he is aware that the whole of Mount Street, in Mayfair, which was re-surfaced during the past year, has been dug up and blocked by the Postmaster-General for the purpose of laying cables; and whether, by some form of co-ordination, this expenditure of the taxpayers' money may be avoided in future?

The MINISTER of TRANSPORT (Mr. Herbert Morrison): I am informed that Mount Street was not re-surfaced during the past year except at its intersection with Park Street. Under Section 4 of the London Traffic Act, schemes are prepared every six months showing the times at which highway authorities in the. London Traffic Area propose to carry out, re-surfacing works on streets which are prescribed under the Section, of which Mount Street is one, and copies of these cherries are furnished to all undertakers having powers to break up streets, including the Postmaster-General, with a view to the co-ordination, so far as practicable, of the operations of the highway authorities and the undertakers referred to.

IMPORTED MEAT.

Mr. THORNE: 73.
asked the Minister of Health if he is aware that, in consequence of the high price of pork, there has been a renewal on a large scale of the importation of pork legs and loins in boxes from Chicago, St. Louis, Kansas City, and other American centres; that 95 per cent. of the boxes are unopened and uninspected; whether the importation of pork joints in this manner is a violation of the Foreign Meat Regulations, 1908; and, if not, when the prohibitions imposed in 1908 were removed?

The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the MINISTRY of HEALTH (Miss Lawrence): My right hon. Friend understands that there has recently been an increase in the imports of frozen pork in boxes. In 1922 my Department recognised the official certificate of the Gov-
eminent of the United States of America for the purposes of the Foreign Meat Regulations, and since that date it has been lawful to import from that country cuts of pork accompanied by such a certificate. The certificate shows that the meat was inspected and passed at the time of slaughter and it ought not, therefore, to be necessary for more than a sample examination to be made at the English ports.

Mr. THORNE: 74.
asked the Minister of Health if he is aware that the examination of Argentine mutton for caseous lymphadenitis is becoming less stringent in all centres outside the City of London; that in the ports of London, Liverpool and Southampton the work of cutting and examining the glands of the sheep is left to dock workers or employ⃩s of the importing firms; that carcases have been passed by the port sanitary authority and afterwards condemned by the City of London inspectors; and if he will state whether he is prepared to issue a Circular instructing port medical officers to carry out examinations effectively?

Miss LAWRENCE: The answer to the first part of the question is in the negative. My right hon. Friend understands that at some ports skilled men are specially employed whose business it is to cut and expose glands for inspection by officers of the port sanitary authority. With regard to the third part of the question, my right hon. Friend is informed that it is not the practice at the port of London to inspect meat which is destined for the City markets and will be inspected there. A conference between the medical officers of health of the ports principally concerned and officers of my Department took place recently, and the conclusion was reached that no relaxation should be made of the present arrangements for examination. My right hon. Friend does not think that any Circular on the subject is required at present.

Mr. MATTERS: Is it not a fact that this disease is universal in its incidence and is found in mutton coming from Australia and New Zealand, and even in the home-grown product?

Miss LAWRENCE: I am aware of such a disease and am also aware of the precautions taken with regard to inspection.

HATRY PROSECUTION.

Sir F. HALL: 78.
asked the Financial Secretary to the Treasury what is the amount in fees paid, or to be paid, to the Attorney-General in connection with the recent prosecution of [...]atry and others?

The FINANCIAL SECRETARY to the TREASURY (Mr. Pethick-Lawrence): The fees paid to the Attorney-General in connection with the recent prosecution of Hatry and others amount to £630 4s.

LEAGUE OF NATIONS COVENANT (ARTICLE 16).

Mr. LOCKER-LAMPSON: I beg to ask leave to move the Adjournment of the House for the purpose of discussing a definite matter of urgent public importance, namely:
The imminence of an agreement between His Majesty's Government and a foreign Power as to the interpretation to be placed on Article 16 of the Covenant, without any consultation with the Council of the League of Nations, thereby engendering suspicion and endangering good relations with other Powers, and without the assent of this House.

The pleasure of the House not having been signified, Mr. SPEAKER called on those Members who supported the Motion to rise in their places, and, not fewer than 40 Members having accordingly risen—

The Motion stood ever, under Standing Order No. 10, until half-past Seven this evening.

PRIVATE BILLS (GROUP G).

Order [4th April] that Captain F. E. Hill do attend the Committee on Group 0 of Private Bills upon Wednesday next, at Eleven of the clock, read, and discharged.

Oral Answers to Questions — SELECTION (STANDING COMMITTEES).

STANDING COMMITTEE A.

Mr. FREDERICK HALL: 

Report to lie upon the Table.

Orders of the Day — HOUSING (No. 2) BILL.

Order for Second Reading read.

The MINISTER of HEALTH (Mr. Arthur Greenwood): I beg to move, "That the Bill be now read a Second time."
The Bill is a stage in the efforts of the nation to deal with a very vital problem which has been the subject in times past of many official inquiries, of much anxious thought, and of a good deal of legislation, but a problem which, nevertheless, has not yet satisfactorily been solved. Over 70 years ago John Bright said that:
The nation in every country dwells ird the cottage.
That is as true to-day as it was then. We have been accustomed to hear that the Englishman's home is his castle, I hope not literally, but at least metaphorically. It was the place where he had a secure refuge and where he was free from invasion. But the home is a good deal more than that. The Englishman's home is the nursery of personal and civic virtues; it is the institution of the whole of us, which, in its intimate day by day life, shapes the destinies of our people.
The housing problem, therefore, is not merely a problem of bricks and mortar; it is one of providing proper conditions of life for a community which deserves it. I am not against the pig sty for the pig. I am against the hovel and the pig sty for human beings, who, whether they like it or not, have cast upon them the responsibilities of citizenship. We are all familiar how in every town and indeed in every village there are decaying houses, dark and damp, houses with rotting floor boards and peeling walls, houses huddled together as though for very shame, houses teeming with people who are citizens or potential citizens of this country living often hidden away from the gaze of the passerby by more respectable buildings. It is the fact that they have been hidden away so long that has kept the problem with us. The marvel is that so much good comes out of such unpromising surroundings. The people who inhabit the slums are much like the people who occupy the
benches in this House. It is true that among the slum dwellers there are shiftless people. There are shiftless people in Mayfair, whose shiftlessness never comes to the public eye because they are too well looked after by other people. There are people in the slums who ultimately are unable any longer to resist the influence of the slums and they merge into the depths of their environment, but there is a large proportion of slum dwellers who throughout the whole of their lives put up a very gallant fight to maintain as well as they can the decencies of family life.
Let me give two illustrations from the reports of medical officers of health, because we have been told no often that it is the slum tenant that makes the slum. The medical officer of health for the city of Hull, dealing with some tenments which have been built there, says:
It is very gratifying to note that although the tenants of the flats already erected have all been drawn from the demolished slum houses, they have proved that they are quite worthy of the more modern accommodation now placed at their disposal, and that, in this case at any rate, it is not 'the tenants who make the slums'.
In the city of Wakefield, which I recently visited, and where there are slums as appalling as in any city in this country, the medical officer of health describes how slum dwellers were taken to a new estate:
At the end of 1925, 24 of the de-housed families had been accommodated in new houses at Portobello, and I am glad to say that most of them are proving satisfactory tenants. We were warned that the tenants turned out of the slum houses would soon make slums of the municipal houses, and certainly we expected a good deal of trouble with many of them. Our expectations have fortunately not been realised. The inspectors, who regularly go round the new houses, seldom have to find fault with their condition, and report that the people are responding wonderfully to their new and better environment.
That, I think, is a true picture and proves that the majority of the people who are condemned, through no fault of their own. to unsatisfactory housing conditions, are. broadly speaking, a pretty fair sample of the nation, with the qualities of the nation and the defects of the nation. At the end of the War, in a little country town, I saw a miserable cottage that ought to have been destroyed. In the window of that cottage there was displayed, proudly, five cards, showing that some woman there had sent five men to the War.
Across three of the cards was drawn a black mark, which showed that three of the men had lost their lives. I have wondered many times since what kind of houses the remaining two are occupying. They were the people to whom we offered homes at the end of the War. By the common consent of all political parties, we were to provide homes for heroes. But there are other classes of heroes besides war heroes, and my heart goes out particularly to those extraordinarily courageous women who are fighting year after year against the dirt and filth of slum environment, bringing up their families, looking after the breadwinner, often enough having to deal with sick children, who ought never to have been sick had there been better housing. For them also something needs to be done and needs to be done urgently.
I am prepared to admit, as we all must admit, that very considerable progress has been made. For near 100 years, from the days of Chadwick, Shaftesbury and other pioneers down to to-day, an enormous amount has been done and the foundations of a system of legislation dealing with houses has been on the Statute Book for a long time. In post-War years I think we can claim to have done as much as any other nation. Many of my predecessors, more distinguished than I, have helped to build up a housing code, and figures of housing achievement which no one would desire to belittle, but the truth is that to-day the people who need help most have received the least assistance. In spite of the enormous number of houses that have been built since the War the problem has in many respects become more complex and more serious.
The problem of the present time, as I see it, is this: we have by the building societies, the Small Dwellings (Acquisition) Act and similar provisions, done a great deal, although much still remains to be done, for those who are able and desire to own the houses in which they live. We have provision whereby local authorities may provide houses to let. They have powers which enable them effectively to deal with what I may call the normal problem, and I hope that both those activities will be steadily pursued. This Bill will, I trust, do something to enable local authorities
to feel a greater sense of security in building under the Act of 1924, but these two methods alone, with the best will in the world, cannot cover the whole ground and cope successfully with the whole problem.
There are two different asp sets of the question which to-day cry aloud for more effective treatment; two diseases which are growing steadily worse. The first is the desecration of the countryside. the unorganised, sporadic development that is taking place, and the uglification of our towns and villages by purblind people. That is a problem which needs early treatment. It. raises not merely the question of town planning or regional planning, but of national planning, in order to make the wisest use of our resources. That is a matter for separate legislation, which I hope it may be my privilege to introduce.
4.0 p.m.
The second problem is the problem of bad and overcrowded houses and districts, what we call the slum problem. That is a problem which has never been effectively tackled. It is a problem which is becoming more difficult of solution year by year, partly because of the progressive decay of old slums and partly because of the deterioration in recent years of more and more property to the slum level; in other words, the creation of new slums. Our progress in the matter of slum clearance has been deplorably slow. In the 30 years before 1919, 75 schemes were confirmed. In the 10 years since then, 121 schemes have been confirmed, of which 43 have been completed. The number of houses and other buildings in confirmed schemes is approximately 15,000. The number of persons whom it is desired to re-house is about 74,000. The number of houses that are to be built is 12,000. The number of houses that have already been demolished is between 8,000 and 9,000, and the number that have been actually completed during the 10 years just closed is only 9,743—a tragically small contribution to the solution of a problem which has become more serious within the last 10 years. It is, obviously, shortsighted of the nation to spend money on health services and to condemn people to live under conditions which create disease with which the health services are brought into existence to deal.
I do not want to weary the House with examples, but let me give the kind of area and the conditions of the area where attempts have been made to clear the slums. I will take an area in Exeter where there was a density of population of 388 persons per acre, where 78 houses per acre were packed together, and, at the inquiry which was held, the town clerk said that the area was rat-infested, the houses were mostly of lath and plaster construction, many being without sanitary conveniences, and the general conditions were worse now than when the area was represented in March, 1920. The chairman of the housing committee said that the death rate for the area was nearly double that of the city as a whole, while the tuberculosis death rate was nearly three times that of the city as a whole. At Keighley, 30 years ago, the medical officer of health put his finger on an area and condemned it as containing houses unfit for human habitation. At a recent inquiry those houses still existed, and the medical officer described the general conditions as dirt and dilapidation, absence of sunlight, no larders (food kept under the bed), no washhouses, 50 tub closets (all a nuisance); some houses built as early as the year 1802.
If you go to a bigger centre of poulation, and take a place like Stepney, the toll of diseases attributed primarily to housing conditions is almost incredible. In the area of Stepney (Limehouse Fields) Improvement Scheme, the infantile mortality rate for 1924 was 161 per thousand, as compared with 74 for the whole borough. The number of deaths under five years of age was 55 per cent. of the total deaths in the area, as compared with 21 per cent. of the total deaths in the whole borough. The infectious diseases notified rate for the area, excluding tuberculosis, was 19 per thousand, as compared with 4.6 for the whole borough. The tuberculosis rate for the area was 2.87 per thousand, as compared with 1.06 for the whole borough.
I could give many other illustrations. I conclude with one further illustration from Nottingham, an area which is less than half-a-mile from the centre of the city. It is described as a "notorious slum," containing narrow alleys from three to eight feet wide, some streets only 12 feet wide in places and 131 back-to-back houses. In the main the buildings
were from 100 to 200 years old, and quite worn out. It is not surprising that in an area like that the death rate was 49.5 per thousand, as against 12.5 for the city of Nottingham as a whole; nor is it surprising that the infantile death rate in that area was more than double what it was for the city as a whole. I grieve to say that this is one of the schemes which has been held up as a result of the Derby judgment, following upon which a writ was served, on behalf of one of the owners, asking for a declaration that the scheme and amending scheme were void.
I give those as illustrations of the conditions of slum life, and now I wish to ask why it is that, so far, we have been unsuccessful in dealing with this problem? In the first place, I think it is quite clearly due to the complicated law and procedure at the present time. For consider what has to be done to get a slum clearance scheme through and completed. The first step is taken by the medical officer of health, who makes a representation. Following upon that, the local authority may make a declaration that the area is an unhealthy area. In some cases it has taken the local authority 30 years to make up its mind. The local authority then, with magnificent dignity and in a leisurely manner, prepares a scheme for the improvement of the area, the scheme is advertised, notices of it are served on the owner, the lessees and the tenants. Then the local authority presents a petition to the Minister praying that an order may be made confirming the scheme. The Minister then holds an inquiry, not always a very speedy process, and after that he may confirm the scheme either as it stands or with modifications. After all this time has elapsed, and this complicated procedure has come to an end, the local authority is then at the very beginning of a slum clearance scheme, and not at the end. It will then proceed to purchase the property, either voluntarily or by compulsion, and proceed with the work of actual slum clearance.
It is obvious that machinery of that kind is too cumbersome to be effective. But, apart from that, difficulties have recently arisen from a decision of the Courts in what is known as the Derby case—.Rex v. Minister of Health ex parte Davis. It was held that the scheme which had been made by the Derby Corporation was bad, and the Minister was
prohibited from confirming it. The scheme dealt with a very small area, 1½ acres, in the very heart of the City of Derby. The land was quite unsuitable for working-class dwellings, and it was the intention of the Corporation, after clearing the land and demolishing the insanitary houses, to sell the site in the open market, and a scheme was adopted to empower the local authority to sell, lease or otherwise dispose of the land, or to appropriate it for any purpose approved by the Minister. But in the Courts the scheme was held to be invalid because the insertion in the scheme of a general power of selling or leasing land unconditionally went beyond the Statute, and the scheme was defective in not providing for the rearrangement' of streets and houses. The practice of confirming schemes on these lines has been followed by the Department for more than half a century, and had received. as everybody thought, the approval of Parliament. It had given rise to no complaint, and was the obviously practical way of ensuring the removal of unhealthy conditions. But the effect of this decision—indeed, there is another case now pending in the Courts—has been in many parts of the country to hold up further progress. That, I may say, is one of the matters to be dealt with in the Bill.
That is the first obstacle to any successful attack on the problem of the slum—the problem of the existing law and procedure under it. The second is the existing grant and all that it involves. It is quite clear, I think, that a grant of 50 per cent. of the estimated net annual loss is inadequate, because it places too heavy a burden upon our local authorities. In the first place, because the net estimated annual loss is, as to half, borne by the Treasury, there is followed inevitably a system of excessive control at every stage in the procedure of a local authority to clear a slum and maintain new houses subsequently. Every purchase of land or proposal to build, every contract for sale and disposal of land subsequently, all arrangements as to rent, have been subject hitherto to the approval of the Minister of Health. This meticulous and detailed supervision is both a discouragement to local authorities and an inevitable source of delay.
The third reason why. I think, particularly in recent years, we have not made very rapid progress is that local authorities have had in the forefront of their minds what I may call normal housing requirements, and their energies have gone in that direction. But the time has now arrived when in building under the Act of 1924 they should deal in a generous way with the problem of the slum, and Lo deal with this problem it is clear that we must eliminate unnecessary procedure, that we must secure more direct and less cumbrous arrangements, that we must give the local authorities greater freedom and that we must give them also greater financial assistance. It is important, in addition, to tighten up, in some respects, the existing law, in order to make it more effective, and it is equally important to enable local authorities to stop the degradation of new districts towards the slum level. That is, broadly, what is proposed in the Bill.
I may be asked, indeed on more than one occasion I have already Peen asked, what about the policy of reconditioning? I believe that reconditioning of individual cottages has a useful but limited part to play in the solution of this problem, but there are too many bad houses that cannot be made good houses for reconditioning ever to be anything approaching a complete policy on this question. I would remind the House that we have on the Statute Book an Act which was designed for this very object. I refer to the Housing (Rural Workers) Act passed by the late Government. It was claimed by those who submitted the Bill to Parliament that there were many old houses which could be put into a good condition at moderate expense, and other buildings which might readily be converted into dwelling-houses if only adequate assistance were provided. In moving the Second Reading of that Bill, the right hon. Member for Edgbaston (Mr. Chamberlain), after referring to the invasion of the country by town dwellers, used these words:
If, therefore, it were possible to provide a certain amount of new building to take care, as the Americans say, of the town dwellers and at the same time to bring up to modern standards the existing old houses in the villages, then I think one might say that the rural housing problem would he solved."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 3rd August, 1926; col. 2840, Vol. 198.]
I have taken the trouble to find out what I said in the reply on that occasion. I said:
When everything is done that can be done to improve existing houses, we shall still be left with the major problem. I do not believe that more than a minority of the houses are likely to be put into a reasonable state of habitation in accordance with modern standards, and, therefore, there is a grave need for new houses."—{OFFICIAL REPORT, 3rd August, 1926; col. 2852, Vol. 198.]
It is a melancholy satisfaction that the history of the last three years has proved who was the better prophet. Very little assistance was given under that Act. Grants under that Act could be made up to £100 for each dwelling or up to two-thirds of the cost of the work, and loans might be made up to 90 per cent. of the value of the improved house. What has it produced? I can give the figures up to the end of December last when the Act had been running for three or four years. The total number of dwellings in respect of which grants or loans had been made or promised was 2,510, and the number of applications still under consideration was 396. One or two local authorities have tried to make effective use of the Act, but most of them have not done so, and they have not done so because they do not believe in it as a policy. In this I am fortified by the Association of Municipal Corporations, who had a conference on the 27th November last, discussed this matter at some length, and came to this conclusion:
To sum up, we cannot advise that reconditioning should not be allowed in view of the experience of such Cities as Birmingham and Bristol, and we are of opinion that, when exercised, reconditioning should be dealt with by the local authority. But generally we consider that reconditioning as a policy is open to grave objections and we recommend that it be not encouraged. We do not consider that further legislative powers in respect of reconditioning should be asked for.
The right hon. Member for Edgbaston will remember that, because he was in the chair at the meeting. Local authorities already have power's for reconditioning, and, within the limits of the possibilities of reconditioning, I hope that they will be used. The Bill introduces what I may call rational reconditioning on a large scale, in a way which I will attempt to show presently, but I am convinced that any concentration on reconditioning as a policy is bound to fail.
The Bill deals with the problems I have outlined, but before coming to the Bill—

Lieut.-Colonel Sir FREDERICK HALL: We want to know the Bill.

Mr. GREENWOOD: I know hon. Members opposite never like being talked to about principles, but before explaining how the principles at which I have arrived are applied in the Bill I would remind the House that though the slum problem looms largest in the Bill and occupies the most prominent place in it, this is a general housing Measure containing provisions which I hope will assist the solution of the more general problem. For a Measure of this kind the Bill is fairly straightforward and intelligible. At any rate, it seeks, so far as slum clearance and allied problems are concerned, to provide a coherent and complete code. In making an attack and an ordered attack, upon slum conditions in our towns and villages, it is clear that the local authority must have in mind three broad classes of cases. There is first, the area which we call in the Bill "the clearance area;" an area which is so bad that complete clearance is the only satisfactory remedy.
There is, secondly, the area which though it may be pretty bad is still worth saving, and, if you do not save it, it will get worse; an area which can be opened up and made decently habitable. That is an area which in the Bill we call an "improvement area." Thirdly, there is the problem of the individual bad house which happens to fall outside either the clearance area or the improvement area but which ought to be repaired or demolished. Part I of the Bill deals with clearance areas and improvement areas. Part II deals with the problem of the individual house. Part I replaces and extends a number of provisions in the Consolidated Act of 1929, and deals with measures to be taken for the clearance and improvement of unhealthy areas. I have already explained the difficult and complex procedure which at present obtains in regard to slums, and the difficulty created by the Derby case. The first part of the Bill deals with those two questions. It does away with what is called "a scheme," and it separates the procedure for the declaration and clearance of an area from the procedure for
dealing with an area when it has been cleared.
That is one of the difficulties in the Derby case. My submission is that while the landlord is perfectly entitled to know the procedure by which he is to be dispossessed, while he is entitled to know what is being done with the area, if it is to be used for rehousing or as an open space because that affects his compensation, it is no business of his what the local authority does with the property after it has been obtained, and, therefore, I think a distinction must be drawn between the acquisition of an area and the subsequent use to which it is put. In order to get over the difficulty created by the Derby decision local authorities are in this part of the Bill given a general power of disposing of the land on a cleared area.

Mr. HARRIS: This is rather an important matter. Can the right hon. Gentleman tell us whether this new procedure will be retrospective and will affect schemes which are not yet completed?

Mr. GREENWOOD: I have been into that question, and if it had been practicable to make it retrospective I should have been glad to have done so. I think that under the new procedure delay will be almost negligible in the case of schemes which have been held up because of the Derby case. Now as to clearance areas. Clause I defines it and prescribes the procedure of a local authority in declaring an area to be a clearance area. An area may be cleared in one of two ways under the Bill. It may be cleared, first, by requiring the owners to demolish the buildings themselves, or, secondly, by the local authority purchasing the area and then arranging for demolition. The method of requiring the owners to demolish is a new one, and is frankly designed to enable local authorities, where they wish to do so, to secure the removal of a bad slum without being obliged to incur enormous capital expenditure on purchase and clearance.
If it is right to require an owner, as we shall under the Bill, to demolish a single house there is no reason why all the owners in an area should not be called upon to demolish all the houses in a clearance area. This is a method which
meets with the approval of local authorities. If a local authority wishes to proceed by this method it will make a clearance order which must be confirmed by the Minister of Health. If objections are taken, as they may be in certain cases, then, of course, there must be a public inquiry. But after order has become operative it will then be the duty of the owners to demolish the buildings, and, if they fail to do so, the local authority is empowered to enter and demolish and recover the cost. The cleared site will then remain with the owners, and they can do what they like with it, subject of course to the local by-laws and to any town planning scheme which may be put forward. They have been robbed of nothing which was worth anything, and they still have their land. What could be fairer?
The other method is one whereby local authorities will purchase the site and buildings, although the buildings in a clearance area will have no great value, and themselves undertake the removal of the buildings on the site. The procedure proposed now is somewhat more expeditious and simpler than under the present law, because it does away with the need for a formal scheme and entitles a local authority to buy the area by agreement or by compulsion. Where they are unable to buy by agreement they may make a compulsory purchase order, of which due notice, of course, must be given to all owners, and the order must be confirmed by the Minister, who must hold an inquiry if there are objections. When the local authorities have bought the land they must proceed to demolish the buildings and site and appropriate the land for some purpose for which they have statutory powers, or dispose of it in some other way. In some cases, of course, they may wish to re-house on the site or to retain it as an open space. I come now to the Clauses 5 and 6 of the Bill.

Mr. CHAMBERLAIN: I should be glad if the Minister would further explain the provisions of the Bill on the subject of clearance areas. I understand that in the case of a clearance urea it is proposed that all the buildings in the area shall be demolished. but in Clause 2 the Bill says:
Where as respects any area declared by them to be a clearance area a local
authority determine to order any buildings in the area to be demolished,…
That seems to suggest cases where some buildings are to be left. Would the Minister clear up that point?

Mr. GREENWOOD: It is quite clear in the Bill that a clearance area is a clearance area, and that everything is cleared, but I will look into those particular words. It may be that an area may be proceeded with by pieces and not by complete demolition of all buildings at one time. With regard to the improvement area, the Bill contains a new development of the methods available to local authorities for dealing with unsatisfactory housing conditions. There are in all towns, and in practically all villages, aggregations of houses in varying degrees of bad condition. Large numbers of them are bad, some worse than others; generally badly arranged and generally overcrowded. Often these are areas of considerable size. The houses are not all so far gone that they need be destroyed; not so far gone as to justify a wholesale clearance of the area. It is an area where, if the worst are dealt with, if air and sunshine are let in and roads are made, it could be made reasonably healthy. That is what is proposed in these two Clauses; only, of course, it is essential that if you cream off, either from houses that have been destroyed to make more open spaces for roads, or from the overcrowded houses into new houses, that surplus population, you cannot be sure that that area will not become a semi-slum very shortly.
It is clear that if public money is to be devoted to tidying up and purifying an area of this kind, it must not be allowed to relapse again into its previous condition. Therefore, we propose that where areas are dealt with in this way, local authorities shall have their bylaws to prevent any relapse into the old conditions which have been destroyed by the operation of the slum clearance scheme. The object of this, of course, is to get the local authority not to deal with this problem in a sporadic fashion, but to look at it broadly and ahead, and to take deteriorating areas, mark them off, deal with them in a proper order of priority, and tidy them up as and when they can, making it clear that once they are tidied up they are never going to become as bad as they were before.
It is clear that in the case of both clearance areas and improvement areas it is essential to the scheme that there should be the provision of houses, that indeed the provision of houses should go on whilst the other process is taking place. In the case of the improvement area, which I regard as being the only scientific form of reconditioning, there is a dual responsibility. The useless houses, the condemned houses go; the local authority drives its streets through where it thinks it needs them and opens out areas which it thinks need more air than they at present have. Then it says to the landlord—to whom better could it say it?—"You must put this house into repair, and you must keep it in repair, and you must not overcrowd it any more." That is real conditioning, because the responsibility for reconditioning of the individual cottage falls where it ought to fall, on the landlord, and the general responsibility for furbishing up the area as a whole falls on the local authorities.

Sir PHILIP PILDITCH: I see that the local authorities are permitted to purchase such areas as they think necessary for opening up, but apparently a local authority is not to be allowed to purchase houses which require to be put and kept in repair. Would the Minister say why corporations alone are allowed to put pressure on the owners of the old houses to keep them in repair, and why the local authorities should not be given at any rate permission to buy?

Mr. GREENWOOD: I have already explained that under the existing law local authorities, if they like, can buy houses. But what you are dealing with now is not a method of increasing the number of houses held by the local authority in an improvement area; what you are trying to do is to tone up an area, and the local authority's job in an improvement area is not to buy cottages which it does not want. It buys them only because it wishes to pull them down and to open up an area.
It is necessary at this point that I should say something about the vexed question of compensation, which is dealt with in Clause 9. I would remind the House that in 1919, by general acclamation, the present basis of compensation was settled. It has operated for nearly 11 years. Local authorities and property owners have become accustomed to
it. Indeed prices have become adjusted to it. It would need overpowering arguments for me, of all Ministers of Health, to go back on the settlement of 1919. I do not believe that there is a great case for it. I would not willingly take any step which would add substantially to the cost of slum clearance. If we were to make a substantial alteration in the law with regard to compensation we would add substantially to the cost of slum clearance. As the law stands, when a house is condemned it is worth nothing. That is right. When meat is condemned it is worth nothing either. I have never heard of any powerful agitation for the compensation of butchers who expose rotten meat for sale to the public. A condemned house, condemned by responsible people, as unfit for human habitation, is a house which obviously is worth nothing. The site is worth something in almost all cases, and the landlord is entitled to that.
But the law, as laid down by other Members of this House than myself 11 years ago, made a reduction in the compensation in cases where an area was to be used for working class houses or open spaces, and ever since that time compensation has been dealt with on that basis, and the sales of property that have taken place have presumably been carried out with that knowledge. It seems right, therefore, that we should keep this broad principle of site value. I saw this morning for the first time a letter in one of the newspapers from the Secretary of the Property Owners' Protection Association:
The Bill re-enacts Section 46 of the existing Housing Act, which has been condemned in no uncertain terms by the late Minister of Health. A consequence of this is that the provisions for compensation of owners of sound property within unhealthy areas are deliberately unjust. I say deliberately, because ample evidence has been placed before successive Ministers of Health that Section 46 of the Housing Act of 1925 has occasioned grievous hardship and injustice to thousands of comparative poor people.
My reply to that would be that if the proof is so ample why did not my predecessors act upon it? It is very reasonable to suggest that the late Government, whose supporters to-day are showing a great deal of interest in the problem, had four and a-half years, a good deal of
which time was wasted, during which, if this was a burning injustice, they might have removed it.

Dr. VERNON DAVIES: They built houses first.

Mr. GREENWOOD: There is what is called, "sound property" For which no payment is made. What hind of property is some of this "sound property"? In another place, in a recent Debate, reference was made to a case where a freehold property, "in sound and satisfactory condition," cost £735. They received site value for it. I have been able to trace what this property was. The houses were of two floors, three rooms on each floor, with a W.C. in the yard. They were old, worn-out, dilapidated and almost dangerous. The walls were badly bulged and defective, and generally speaking the houses were badly maintained. They were apparently erected in 1853 and were purchased on the terms of Section 46 for £250. In the face of the report of an inquiry which says that, how can anyone say that this was property "in sound and satisfactory condition"? Is this what people mean when they talk of good property?
I have a Liverpool case of a similar kind where the property owners declared that the property was in quite good condition and objected to its being closed. The corporation evidence disproved that statement almost entirely. One famous case of so-called injustice is a case in London, not of a freeholder, but of a leaseholder, which was heard in Westminster by an official arbitrator as recently as December, 1928. This man got nothing for his property, and that is regarded as an injustice. When I look into the case I find that the facts are as follows. He leased 39 small houses in London in September, 1919, after the area in which they are situated had been marked by the borough council medical officer as an unhealthy area—marked down for demolition at site value. He did this within a few days, almost, of the passage into law of the Act of 1919 which established this basis of compensation. The man who acts with the knowledge that the area has been condemned, and with the knowledge of a new law in front of him, has no case upon which he can go to the public and say that he has been hardly treated. If time per-
mitted I could give details of the condition of every one of these 39 houses, and if I had been medical officer of health I should have condemned them myself.
If this is what "perfectly good property" means, then in the case of a clearance area there will be no perfectly good property. [HON. MEMBERS: "Why?"] There is no use in hon. Members asking foolish questions like that. I say there will not be, and we have it in the Bill that there will not be. A clearance area is an area which has to be cleared, because the buildings in themselves are bad, or because those buildings are injurious to the health of the neighbourhood; and it is no more meritorious to own a building which is dangerous to somebody else's tenants than it is to own a building which is dangerous to one's own tenants. I think it is clear that while, conceivably, there may be here and there a hard case, there are hundreds of thousands of hard oases of slum tenants with whom I am more concerned. As regards compensation, I believe that the House, on reflection, will agree that it would be a mistake to depart from the present basis. There are cases which ought to be helped, and a local authority will be enabled to make reasonable allowances to displaced persons in aid of removal expenses, and to make grants, if they so desire, towards any loss which in their opinion has been sustained by any person, by reason of the disturbance of his trade or business consequent upon his having to leave his premises. That provision, I think it will be admitted, is reasonable.
Then, with regard to the individual house, there will be cases in many towns, indeed, I imagine, in all towns, of individual houses or very small groups of houses, which will be outside a clearance scheme and outside an improvement scheme. These are dealt with in Clauses 16 and 17, and the general idea of the alterations which are being made is to simplify and shorten the procedure for dealing with such houses. Unfortunately, nowadays, when a local authority desires to deal with an individual house the procedure is such that, if the landlord chooses, it may be 18 months before anything can be done. That procedure, as I say, will he shortened and, in this case, it is provided that the tribunal of appeal
shall be the County Court instead of the Minister.
The Bill contemplates that individual houses which are unfit for human habitation should be divided into their two proper categories, namely, those which can be made fit, and those which cannot be made fit. In regard to houses which fall into the first class—those which can be made fit—local authorities have the duty imposed upon them of requiring the owner to carry out the work necessary to make the house fit. If the owner defaults, then the local authority itself may do the work and recover the cost. In Clause 40 of the Bill local authorities are given power, in suitable cases, to advance money to owners undertaking repairs, because there may be cases where repairs are urgently needed, and in which the owner is, at the time, unable to meet the charge. An advance of that kind would, of course be a help. If however the house is unfit and cannot at a reasonable expense be made fit, then the local authority may make an order and enforce the demolition of the house. Here, again, as in the case of the clearance and improvement areas, it is not contemplated that local authorities should proceed with the demolition of unfit houses, unless new houses or alternative accommodation of some other kind is made available.
The third part of the Bill deals with a more general question, namely, that of housing programmes. I have felt for some time that one of the weaknesses of our housing administration has been the fact that the local authorities have, as it were, just lived from year to year. They have never really visualised their problems, and have never developed a coherent policy for carrying out the work which lies before them. Part III of the Bill provides that, in the case of every borough and urban district with over 20,000 population, the authority shall this year, and in every fifth year, submit a programme of the housing work which they propose to undertake during that quinquennial period. That will include all their housing work—not merely under this Measure, but under the other Acts of Parliament as well. I believe that the effect of that provision will be to give us a continuity of effort and a definite scientific programme such as we have not enjoyed before.
I now come to the financial aspect of the Bill. In Clause 23, we propose to make a very substantial change in the basis of Exchequer assistance for rehousing purposes. At present the local authority, as I have explained, receives its one-half of the estimated net annual loss, and this, as I have pointed out. means an enormous amount of supervision and in itself is not adequate. Therefore. we propose a new grant on a unit basis. The grant will be in aid of the activities of the local authorities—the expenses of the local authorities—in dealing with clearance areas, in dealing with improvement areas, and in dealing with the demolition of individual houses. The persons rehoused in any of these three ways, under any of these three schemes, will be eligible in respect of the grant which is a grant per person—per man, woman, and child. All babies born in slums from now onwards will enjoy a dowery such as no State has ever conferred before. They will be able to make a contribution which will enable the local authority to remove them into the housing condition to which they are entitled. The grant will be an annual grant payable for 40 years. The association of local authorities with whom this matter has been discussed, agreed to that basis and it has been fixed, so that the proportion of the cost of the scheme borne by the local authorities shall be diminished and the rate charged, therefore, proportionately reduced.
After consultation with the local authorities, we have arrived at the figure of 45s. per year for 40 years, per person rehoused under this Bill, as the amount of the grant. In the case of a family of five that would mean a grant of £11 5s. per year for 40 years. In two cases the amount of the grant is increased. In the case of persons displaced from houses and rehoused in agricultural parishes the amount of the grant will be increased to 50s. per person for 40 years.
5.0 p.m.
There is another exception which we have had to take into account. There are one or two places—they are not numerous, and London is the outstanding case—where the conditions are such that a considerable amount of rehousing must take place on the site where the people have lived before. Much as I would prefer to see our population spreading out rather than rising heavenward in their dwellings, one has to face the fact that,
for a limited number of our people, who must live, or who passionately desire to live in the centres of very large cities, tenement provision must be made. It happens that tenement provision is expensive and that almost invariably, indeed, I may say, invariably, when a local authority has to rehouse people on the site, in tenements—by which I mean something more than three storeys—they have to do so on land which is tremendously expensive. It was felt. therefore that we should provide for the limited number of cases in which the local authorities can prove to the Minister that they must rehouse on the site, that it must be done in tenements, and that the land is expensive. In these cases, we propose to give an additional 25s. per person for 40 years, or, in all, an amount of £3 10s. The number of houses required to be built for the accommodation of the persons to be displaced, and on which the grant will be paid, will, of course, depend on their size and type. They cannot all be alike; some will have to be much larger than others. They will be fixed beforehand on the submission of proposals, and must be approved by the Minister. That, I think, will enable us to avoid some of the dangers to which reference has been made in the Press.
As to the rents, the special conditions are similar to those applicable to houses built under the Act of 1924. The object of conditions as regards rent is to secure that the whole of the Exchequer subsidy, and the equivalent at least of £3 15s. per year from the local rates, should be applied in reduction of rent. That principle is being followed in this Bill, and the local authorities will make an estimate of annual expenses to be incurred under the Bill. It will calculate the annual equivalent of those expenses over 60 years; it will calculate the annual equivalent for 60 years of the Exchequer grant and the local authority's contributions, and it will subtract these grants from its own expenditure, and that will give the local authority the aggregate rent which it can charge for the year.

Mr. CHAMBERLAIN: Will the right hon. Gentleman indicate why these equivalents are calculated on the basis of 60 years, when the contributions are to be made for a period of 40 years?

Mr. GREENWOOD: The life of a house is at least 60 years, and we are bound to make the calculation of the expenses and the grants on the same basis. Clearly one ought, in estimating rents to be charged, to have regard to the minimum life of the house. Within the limits of the aggregate rents to be obtained for all the houses under the Bill, the local authority will be given complete freedom. It must not draw in rents any more than the aggregate which I have described. Within these limits, it may differentiate rents. A local authority will be able to charge such reasonable rents as it thinks fit, and to differentiate according to the ability of the tenants to pay. I have left the precise method by which they shall work to the local authorities themselves. They will no doubt do it in different ways. Some authorities, I imagine, will have one nominal standard of rent for all houses, and make abatements in special cases. Some authorities will make allowances, taking account of the number of children. Others will probably build rather different houses on different sites, but the local authority will be free to determine the way in which it shall make the rent burden rest more easily upon the occupants of the houses.

Mr. WHEATLEY: Will the local authority be free to provide an inferior house?

Mr. GREENWOOD: I would not say an inferior house. I am not quite sure what an inferior house means. If the right hon. Gentleman is suggesting that you might get down to rock bottom houses by providing something which is really too inferior to be reasonable, then the answer is "Certainly not." Of course, we have in municipal houses a differentiation between the parlour house and the non-parlour house, and differentiation for size and amenity of that kind will, of course,, obtain under this Bill.

Mr. WHEATLEY: My point was whether they would be empowered to provide a house inferior to the minimum standard in existence at present?

Mr. GREENWOOD: Oh, no. I will come to smaller houses presently, but there is no intention of degrading the standard; as a matter of fact, provision
is made for building under this Bill houses of a larger size than can be built under the law at present.

Sir TUDOR WALTERS: Is the right hon. Gentleman going to depart from the standard in the Tudor Walters report?

Mr. GREENWOOD: I hope that we shall improve on it. If we take a fairly normal case, I think that it will be clear that a local authority will be able to let a substantial proportion of its houses at a good deal less than the rent that can be obtained at present. I estimate that it would be possible in the normal ease—I do not say in every case—to let half of the houses built under this Bill, on a broad average, at least 2s. per week less than the rents at present charged for houses under the existing scheme. That will make it possible to accommodate displaced persons, as to one half of them, at any rate, in houses where the rent would be as low as 5s. a week plus rates, and as to the other half in houses at rent of 7s. per week plus rates. That, I think, will mean a substantial relief to the hard-pressed slum dweller. It is clear, of course, that a grant of this kind cannot be made permanent.
It will be within the recollection of the House that when the 1924 Act was passing through, it was intended that the grant under that Measure should be reviewed every three years. Unfortunately, by what I cannot help thinking was a profound mistake on the part of the Liberal party at that time, the Conservative party secured an amendment to reduce the period of review to two years, at which it has since stood in law. I think that it is quite clear that experience proves that any scheme of this kind ought to run for three-year periods. Therefore, it is proposed in the Bill, both in Clause 25 and in Clause 36, which deals with the Act of 1924, that the review of Exchequer grants under the Wheatley scheme and under this scheme shall take place at intervals of three years; the first revision will, therefore, take place after October, 1933. That means that the present Wheatley grant, which was stabilised last year for a further year, will be stabilised for a, further three years, and that the grants under the present Bill will have a preliminary three years' run, and thereafter both the grants will be reconsidered side by side.
The following Clause is one which enables local authorities to enter into arrangements with public utility societies and similar bodies.
I come to Part IV of the Bill, which deals with rural houses. The object of this part of the Bill is to secure more energetic and more comprehensive treatment of the rural housing problem. I know that there are rural district councils up and dawn the country which have done extraordinarily good work, but there are a good many others, owing, it may be, to apathy, or to fear of the cost, have done much less than they should have done. Some of them, no doubt, besides lacking resources, lack the requisite knowledge and experience on the part of their officials to deal with housing problems. I considered whether it would be possible to make the county council the housing authority, but that seemed to bring in its train a good many difficulties, and would, I think, have proved to be impracticable. It is, however, quite clear that the county council ought now to have wider responsibilities in regard to housing than has hitherto been the case. Therefore, we are providing in the Bill that every county council must keep its eye on the housing conditions and needs of each rural district in its area, and keep its eye on the steps that the rural areas are taking to deal with bad housing conditions.
Each rural district council this year is being required to forward to the county council information with regard to its housing conditions and needs, and to do that every time the county council asks it to do so. That will mean that the county council will constantly have before it both the needs and the proposals of these minor local authorities, and power is given to the county council to come in and take part in the actual work. The Bill, however, goes further than that. Where a rural district council builds houses specifically for agricultural workers or people of substantially the same economic class, the county council will be required to make a contribution of £1 per year for 40 years. That will spread some portion of the charge over the county for the provision of agricultural workers' cottages. This is not a subsidy in relief of rent, but a subsidy to the rural district council in relief of
rates. Instead of the rural district-council, with its present depleted resources, having to meet the £3 15s., it will be required to meet only £2 15s., and a charge of £1 will fall upon the county. In this part of the Bill, we are dealing with default powers as they affect rural district councils and county councils. Provision is made for the exercise of default powers by the county council where the rural district council does not do its work, and for the exercise of default powers where the county council does not do its work.
I need not refer in detail to the Clauses in Part V of the Bill, because I have touched upon most of them already. One or two I must refer to. Clause 39 deals with the provision for aged persons of houses of a smaller size than those for which special assistance car he given today. I feel myself that this is an experiment well worth trying, for two reasons. In the first place, it will be within the knowledge of many Members of this House that old age pensioners are occupying houses which they have occupied for a quarter of a century, notwithstanding the fact that they are now grandparents and that their children have gone out to homes of their own; and anything which would take those aged people into other cottages would do something to relieve the congestion in the big towns. It would make available family houses for family needs, and, not only so, but it is only justice to the aged people to provide them with houses which will be easier for the aged to live in comfortably than the houses which they at present occupy.
We can here produce the minimum requirement with regard to size. If so be that I receive an old age pension myself, and live to that age, my requirements will be modest. A room in which to live and a room in which to sleep will be all that one requires, and so long as these cottages, these aged workers' homes, are owned by the local authorities, and the grant is payable on condition that only aged people live in them, we can dispense with the present minimum conditions and build smaller dwellings for them. Of course, that will mean smaller costs; in fact, what we are doing is to, pay here two-thirds of the contribution paid under the 1924 Act, and the subsidy in this case, therefore, will be £5 per year for 40 years.
Later Clauses in the Bill, Clauses 45 and onwards, deal with the default powers for authorities other than the rural district councils arid the county councils, and really replace a mass of very confused legislation which has become tangled in the course of time, powers which I think it is necessary that the Minister of Health should enjoy. I will not explain any more of the details of the Bill, and I now come to an end.
I hope the Bill will commend itself to the House, and I hope that it will be speedily—I emphasise the word—passed into law. I hope that the local authorities, with whom I have endeavoured to work during recent months in the closest harmony and co-operation, will receive this Bill, when it is on the Statute Book, with both hands and extract from it 100 per cent. of what value it contains. I hope they will now, with a new Measure in their hands, pursue to the very end, with real vigour, with zeal, and with determination, the final conquest of the slums. I believe they will, and I believe they will have behind them the active support of a large body of public opinion. Now that, by common consent of all sections of opinion in this country, a definite, concerted attack is being made on the slum problem, I think we should agree that there must be no truce until the very end and until the slums have been completely destroyed. It is a struggle which from now onwards will, I hope, be waged ceaselessly and relentlessly, until the last hovel sinks into the earth and the last overcrowded family has a decent home. When that day comes, whatever it may have cost in treasure, the nation will have rid itself of a gigantic burden of disease, of misery, of degradation, and will have done what it ought to have done before, and laid truly one of the essential foundations of a civilised society—the home of the people.

Mr. CHAMBERLAIN: I am sure the House has listened with the deepest interest to the very exhaustive, lengthy, and lucid explanation which the right hon. Gentleman has given of his Bill. He has treated the subject with an absence of party passion which I, for one, warmly welcome, because, although on remedies there must no doubt be differences of opinion in this House, yet as to the urgency of the problem, the extent of it, and the necessity for finding some remedy,
all Members of the House are agreed. The subject inevitably must make the strongest appeal to the sympathies of anybody who has ever entered a slum and observed the squalor, the gloom, the discomfort, the injury to health which exist there, and I would like to associate myself with the right hon. Gentleman in paying tribute to the wonderful spirit which is exhibited by many of the slum dwellers, that often excites admiration, when I have seen with what patience, with what courage, with what inexhaustible good humour they put up with conditions which to most of us must seem absolutely intolerable.
Of course, we, in this generation, did not make the slums. They are an unhappy legacy which has been left to us from a time when the principles of public health were not understood, and when standards were very different from what they are to-day. I think perhaps it is fair to our ancestors to say that probably they were very much better when they were built than they appear to us to-day. Our atmosphere has not got any cleaner as time has gone on, and, of course, the fabric of these houses, in the long period of years that has elapsed since they were erected, has, continually decayed and gone from bad to worse. But to-day public opinion, the public conscience, is awake to the evil of the slums more acutely than it ever has been before, and it is really an extraordinary thing to think that, with this public awareness of all the evils of the slums, of all the damage and injuries, physical and moral, which they are doing to a large section of the population to-day, we have only to step a few yards from any one of our great, broad, clean, handsome streets, with their fine buildings on either side, to find ourselves in one of these terrible warrens, where men, women, boys, and girls are all herded together in darkness and in stagnant air, without the possibility of leading a clean and wholesome life.
Certainly the fact that these things exist, that they have been known to exist ever since the War, and that they have not been put right, is the most eloquent testimony that you could have to the extraordinary difficulties of the problem which the right hon. Gentleman is attempting to solve. Certainly it has not been for want of trying. Act after
Act has been passed giving fresh powers to local authorities and giving them further and further financial assistance to attack this crying evil, yet the slums are still there. There is hardly one of our larger industrial cities in which there are not great areas crying aloud for improvement. The right hon. Gentleman said that a good deal had been done, but he pointed, and very justly, to the figures of the actual slum clearance schemes that have been put into operation since the year 1919. I agree that, whether you take the number of houses dealt with or the number of persons whose conditions have been improved by these schemes, it appears to be lamentably, terribly small.
I am sorry that the right hon. Gentleman did not mention also the other kind of work which has been done to improve the slums, namely, the improvement of individual houses, because that really has made, in a much less spectacular way, a far larger contribution towards the improvement of slum conditions. I think I am right in saying that every year something like half-a-million houses are put into repair on the representation of the local authorities, and if I take the one town which I have had under close observation for many years, I can certainly say with confidence that the conditions there are far better than they used to be when I was a boy.
Of course, as I think the right hon. Gentleman recognised, the worst feature of the slums is the overcrowding. If there were no overcrowding, the difficulties of the slum problem would be cut in half, and it is the recognition of that fact which has, since the War, caused the local authorities to concentrate, and I think rightly concentrate, nearly all their attention upon the provision of new houses. Their efforts have been remarkably successful, and very large numbers of new houses have been built, but I think it is only in the last year or possibly two years that I have felt that the local authorities have been sufficiently relieved from the grinding pressure to build new houses to enable them to turn their eyes towards the problem of the slums with any prospect of success. It has to be remembered that when you begin to deal with the slums you are adding to the problem of providing new houses, because
you are pulling dawn houses and increasing the number that will have to be built. I believe I was personally responsible for an estimate, which has since been widely adopted, that something like 100,000 houses were required every year in order to provide for the annual increase of the population and for the replacement of houses which went out of use. I think that estimate is too high, I do not believe that so many are necessary, but I wanted to be on the safe side. Supposing we take the number at 70,000 or 80,000 houses a year; that makes a rather formidable hole in the number of new souses provided since the War, and leaves a very much smaller number available for overtaking the accumulation of arrears than is sometimes realised.
But, as I say, I believe the time has now come when we are ripe for further legislation upon this subject. If we offer local authorities terms which they will consider fair and reasonable, I believe it is possible for them now, at any rate, to tackle this problem more seriously than they have been able to do in the last 10 years, and I hope we may anticipate that some improvement will shortly take place. I think it is a matter of common knowledge that if the late Government had been in office for another period, we should have introduced a housing and town planning Bill to deal with this subject, and I am very glad that my successor has given early attention to it.
I have given careful study to this Bill, and, in considering it here, I shall try to follow the example of the right hon. Gentleman and deal with it in no party spirit. That does not mean that I am not to point out what I consider to be its faults, but I do not wish to press my criticism to any unfair point, and my observations will he made with a sincere desire to improve the Bill and to make it more fair, as I think, and more practicable. My impressions of it are that I am partly relieved and partly disappointed. I am relieved, because there is nothing in it which ought to make anybody's hair stand on end. It is not the sort of Bill we should have had if the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Shettleston (Mr. Wheatley) had been Minister of Health. There is nothing revolutionary about it; and, indeed, that brings me very near to the
reasons for my disappointment. One did hope that with a new Government and a new Minister, who had spent a good deal of the last 4½ years in opposing very vehemently any housing proposals that were put forward by the late Government, we should have had some new ideas in this Bill. But I have searched it through and through, and I cannot find any spark of originality about it. A very great part of it, nearly half of it, is not much more than a restatement, with some modifications, of existing legislation, and there are certainly some very notable omissions, I am sorry to see.
The most important provision is the alteration of the subsidy. So far as the change in the method of subsidy is concerned, I approve of the plan of getting away from the percentage contribution. As the right hon. Gentleman pointed out, a percentage contribution means that you must have a constant and meticulous examination of all the expenditure in order to make sure that undue demands are not being made on the Exchequer, and I think our experience of the Acts of 1923 and 1924 shows that the plan of making definite contributions from the Exchequer is one which conduces to efficiency in work and also good economy in working. In so far as the increase of subsidy is calculated to reduce the liabilities of the local authorities, I approve of that also. It does not seem unreasonable to endeavour to assimilate the proportionate shares of the Exchequer and the local authorities in the expense of slum clearance to those which prevail in the case of new houses subsidised by the State, but in so far as the new subsidy is to go to making differentiated rents I foresee very considerable difficulties, if indeed those differentiated rents are not made impossible by increased costs of building. I may have a little more to say upon that when I come to the Clauses which deal with it. I regret very much, also, that there is no provision for the town planning of built-up areas. That is a feature which should be associated with any legislation dealing with housing in built-up areas. It has been long called for, and it was always understood that it was to be associated with a Bill of this kind, and I regret very much that the right hon. Gentleman seems to have
thought it was not necessary to include it in this Measure. Another point to which undoubtedly a great deal of attention will be given is what I consider to be the unnecessarily harsh and unjust provisions with regard to the compensation of owners whose property is taken.
With these general remarks I would like to make some observations on particular Clauses. The first four Clauses deal with what are now to be called clearance areas. First, I would call attention to the fact that the right hon. Gentleman was not quite accurate when he described these areas as areas in which all the dwelling-houses were in a bad condition. If he will read his own definition in Clause I he will see that there is an alternative to the condition of the dwelling-houses, and that alternative is a narrowness or bad arrangement of the streets by which the area is made dangerous or injurious to health. Although I am not suggesting that it is likely there would be an area in which the streets were so narrow and badly arranged that the health of the inhabitants was seriously affected while all the buildings were nevertheless sound, yet the House will agree that it is quite possible that some of the buildings may be sound even though many of them may be bad.
That is my first criticism upon the Clauses dealing with clearance areas; that whether the local authority adopts either alternative, the alternative that the owners must demolish the buildings, or that the local authority shall purchase the area arid demolish the buildings themselves, no distinction is to be made between any of the buildings in the area, even those which are not dwelling-houses at all. It is possible, indeed I think it follows inevitably from the Bill as drafted, that in one of these clearance areas every building, it may be a church, or a hall, or a shop, in addition to the dwelling-houses, will have to be demolished by the owners at their own expense and without compensation. If I am not giving the correct account of the meaning of the Clause, no doubt we shall have some interpretation of it later, but that is how I read it, and if that be so, that is what I call being excessively harsh and unjust towards the owners whose property is to be demolished.
The right hon. Gentleman said that in the case of an individual house which
has been condemned as unfit for human habitation, it is already necessary for the owner to demolish it at his own expense, and asked why that should not be the case with a whole area. I should agree if every building and every house in the area had been condemned as unfit for human habitation, but my point is that these areas may, in fact must, contain many dwellings which are not in that condition, and that no distinction is made between the owners of these houses and the others. We may very well have cases where houses have already been the subject of orders by the local authority compelling the owners to spend considerable sums of money in putting them into good condition, and in spite of that, and although the neighbours of these owners may have spent nothing on their houses, all are to be treated exactly alike. Once an area has been declared to be a clearance area, the property is to be pulled down at the owner's own expense, and he is to receive nothing. I say, again, that is very unjust, and I do not think it can possibly be allowed to stand in the Bill.
When we come to the case of local authorities purchasing areas, there, again, we find that all houses are to be purchased by the local authority at site values. In the existing procedure a distinction is made between two kinds of property in a slum improvement scheme. In the jargon of the local authorities and the Ministry of Health, there are blue properties and pink properties. The pink properties are those to be taken at site value, and the blue properties those which had been brought into the scheme not because they were bad in themselves but in order to secure the efficiency of the scheme, and those houses are to be bought at market values. That distinction has now been swept away. In a clearance area every house, whether it would have been blue or pink under the existing legislation, is to be treated just the same, and all are to be taken at site value. Another point to which I would like to call attention is in the case where a local authority has purchased the land in a clearance area. Under Clause 4, Sub-section (1, a), it is provided that
they shall, as soon as may be, demolish the buildings thereon.
That is very different from the procedure under which the owners are ordered to
demolish the buildings themselves, because where the owners have to do it they must do it within six weeks of the time that the building is required to be vacated. One of the things which have given rise to criticism and a sense of injustice on the part of the owners in Section 46 of the present Act under which, in some cases, local authorities, having bought the property at its site value, and without having paid anything for the buildings, instead of demolishing those buildings have kept them in their own hands, and made a profit out of them. What does that mean? I know what the views of local authorities have been on this point in the past. They have not. deliberately entered upon a scheme to snake a profit by buying for nothing something from which they might be able to collect revenue, because that has been merely incidental. What has happened is that, after having bought the area, they have found themselves unable to find places for all the people who were displaced, and they have had to leave the people living where they were, and the local authority has drawn the rents.
What is there in this Bill to prevent that kind of thing happening again? It seems to me that the Minister of Health has only aggravated, by this Bill, the sense of injustice in that respect. I would like to make this one further observation on that point, that although the right hon. Gentleman says that the owners are left with the site in their hands, and have nothing to complain of, the House will appreciate that they are not in the same position as the local authority that purchases the buildings, because the local authority has compulsorily purchased the whole of the site, and there is very often a great difference in value between the aggregate value of a number of smallholdings and the value of the whole site. The owners are by no means in as good a position as the local authority which can buy the whole site, as a commercial and not as a housing site. I have no objection to the local authority having power to do that, and I approve of the provision which will cancel the Derby judgment. The suggestion made by the Minister of Health that the owner has nothing of which to complain, and is very well off when he has got the site, does
not put him in a position which is anything like comparable to the position of the local authority.
I want to say a few words about Clause 6, which deals with the treatment of improvement areas. In regard to these proposals I prefer to proceed rather by way of question than actual criticism, because I am not quite sure that I fully understand what is the effect of this Clause. Everything depends upon how these improvement areas are going to be used. Certain things will be done. First of all, the local authority must serve notices in the case of dwelling houses which are unfit for human habitation "requiring the execution of all necessary repairs thereto, or the demolition thereof." That can be done anywhere in areas which are not improvement areas at all, and there appears to be no difference in this respect between the houses in an improvement area and. those without the area.
There are two other important proposals. There is power to purchase land for opening out the area. I think we shall want to know a good deal more about this power of purchasing land for opening out areas when we reach the Committee stage. Does it mean land within the area only, or does it comprise land without the area? Does it include the case of a new street which is brought up to the edge of the area? We should like some further information as to what is meant by those words, and it will be necessary in Committee to define them rather more closely. Power is taken under Clause 6 to
make and enforce under Sections 6 and 7 of the Housing Act, 1925. … by-laws satisfactory to the Minister for preventing and abating over-crowding in the area.
What is really intended under that provision? We want more information upon that point. As I understood the explanation which was given by the Minister of Health, each of those houses is to be the subject of a by-law which will regulate the number of persons who are to occupy those houses. Each house is to have a sort of ticket showing how many people may inhabit it, and I understand that the right hon. Gentleman is to have any powers which are necessary to prevent those areas falling back into the condition they were in before being declared an improvement area. If that
is a correct interpretation, then this is a very interesting development, but why make a distinction between improvement areas and new housing areas? It is just as important that a new housing area laid out and built upon by the local authority should not be allowed to fall into a condition of slums, and if it is a good thing to pass bylaws in respect of improvement areas and lay down that each house should have a certain number of residents ascribed to it, and that no more should be allowed to occupy that house, why does that provision apply in improvement areas and not in the new housing areas? If you are going to provide that not more than a certain number of people shall inhabit these houses, where are the other people to be accommodated? Clause 5 (1, iii) provides that
the authority shall satisfy the Minister that the size of the area is such that the housing conditions therein can be remedied effectively within a reasonable period and that accommodation available for the persons of the working classes who will be displaced by the steps which the authority propose to take for the improvement of the area exists, or can be provided by the authority in advance of the displacements which will from time to time become necessary as those steps are taken.
That means that they must not declare it an improvement area until they can build enough new houses for the accommodation of the surplus population. I do not think that proposal is going to get us much further. When some hon. Members opposite rise to speak in this Debate, we may have more enlightenment as to what is meant by Sub-section (1) of Clause 6. I think that the right hon. Gentleman has missed a great opportunity in respect of the amendment of these improvement areas. I have always contended that there is something else which is of absolutely first-class importance in dealing with housing accommodation of this class besides the mere provision of bricks and mortar, or even the prevention of overcrowding. An enormous amount depends upon the management of the property. One of the difficulties in these areas in our existing towns is that there is a great multiplicity of owners. Each individual owns, perhaps, one, two, or six houses, adjoining one another, and you cannot get a proper standard of management as long as you have this multiplicity of owners.
6.0 p.m.
The Minister of Health said something about reconditioning, and that reconditioning could never be a complete policy. I never heard anyone suggest that, but I do suggest that reconditioning may be a very valuable adjunct to any provision dealing with housing. It is a provision which can be put into operation rapidly over wide areas, and it takes over the temporary accommodation of people while more permanent accommodation is being provided. I have always accompanied any suggestions which I made for reconditioning with what I consider is absolutely essential, namely, that it should be accompanied by a proper system of management. There is nothing in the provisions for these improvement areas which is likely to improve the present state of management. The right hon. Gentleman said that he was fortified in his views upon reconditioning by the Association of Municipal Corporations. I was present at the meeting when that association passed a resolution on this subject. It is quite true that I was in the chair, and as chairman I did not think it necessary to take part in the discussion, but I know that the Association of Municipal Corporations said that if reconditioning was to be done, the local authority ought to do it. Under Clause 6 reconditioning is to be done by individual owners to individual houses only. Therefore, there is no hope under this scheme of any sort of standardisation of the management of property on a proper basis. There was a great opportunity here for the right hon. Gentleman to have provided, either that the local authority should purchase these properties, recondition them, and manage them itself, or that some public utility society might undertake the duty. I should be quite content, myself, to see the management handed over to a body which was not an elected body, but something in the nature of a commission which should be responsible for the management of these small houses. That is an idea which, apparently, if it has occurred to the right hon. Gentleman at all, has not been thought by him to be of sufficient importance for serious consideration. I regret that that should be so, but this is not my Bill, and I suppose I must not complain because the Bill does not contain some ideas which seem to me to be
more important than they do to the author of the Bill.
Now I come to Part II, which contains provisions with respect to the repair or demolition of individual insanitary houses. The word "Departmental" is written all over this part of the Bill. It is merely a series of minor modifications which experience has shown to be desirable in existing legislation, and certainly there is nothing there which need arouse any agitated feelings in any part of the House. On the whole, I think that the modifications are improvements. We get rid of the old closing order, except so far as underground rooms are concerned, and the owner of a house which is the subject of representation has to make his own proposals—which, of course, is pretty well what he does now—for its improvement, and, if they are not satisfactory, he has to demolish the house. I am not going to enter into any detailed examination or criticism of the Clauses in Part II, but I come to Part III, which contains the kernel of the Bill, namely, the Clauses which deal with the Exchequer contributions that are to be paid, and the conditions which are to accompany them.
I have already said that I approve of the plan of getting away from a percentage contribution to a definite sum, but I confess that I am puzzled by the particular proposal which appears in the Bill—the proposal, that is to say, to attach the subsidy to the person and not to the house. I did not think that the right hon. Gentleman, in his account, gave us any clear or intelligible reason why this particular plan has been adopted. After all, the local authority which is going to build houses for these people is not going to be limited in any way as to the number of persons who may occupy the house. That, I suppose, will vary as much in the future as it has in the past, and as it does to-day, and, consequently, the actual contribution from the Exchequer which is to be contributed to any particular house depends, not on the house, but on the number of people who happen to occupy it.
If a house is occupied by three persons, then the amount of the contribution is. £6 15s. If the same house is occupied by five persons, the amount of the contribution is £11 5s. What is the reason for forcing the local authorities, in fixing the rents, to enter into these elaborate
calculations, which, as I understand, they will have to do in order to translate the subsidy per person into a subsidy per house? After all, the rent is paid on the house, and not according to the number of persons who occupy the house, and, therefore, sooner or later, the local authorities have got to make that calculation and translate the subsidy per person into subsidy per house. I suppose that, in order to do that, they will have to take an average number of persons per house. Why should this complication be introduced? Why should it not have been said straight away that a given subsidy per house would be the Exchequer contribution in this case, as it is in the case of the Acts of 1923 and 1924?
A number of questions arise in connection with this subsidy. The local authority has a very difficult and thankless task before it when it attempts to fix differential rents for similar classes of houses. The right hon. Gentleman said that there would be different kinds of houses, and that, of course, we understand; but it is equally the case that, if the intention of the Bill is to be carried out, two houses identically similar in all respects are to be let at different rents. Are those different rents to be attached to the houses, or are they to be attached to the dispossessed persons who have come out of the slums? If they are attached to the houses, what happens when the slum dwellers go? They will not live there for ever. At some time or another, the man who has come out of a slum will, for some reason or another, migrate, but, ex hypothesi, everyone who has been dispossessed has been provided with a house, so there can be no more to come nut of the slums to occupy the houses, and. in such a case the local authority will have to find a tenant who has not come out of a slum.
Is that tenant to pay the reduced rent or not? If not, where is the difference going? Is it going into the pocket of the local authority? I should like to hear what the answer to these questions is. If the rent is to be reduced, we want to know why the person who has not come out of a slum at all is to be favoured in this particular way. Taking it the other way round, is the rent to be attached to the person? If so, is he to carry a reduced rent with him when be leaves this house and goes to some other
house, and how is that to be adjusted? Moreover, if the ground on which the rent is reduced is not that he is a dispossessed person, but that he is a person who is unable to pay a higher rent, is the local authority then going to keep a constant supervision over his income? In the case of a man who goes into a house having stated that his circumstances are such that he cannot pay the rent which his neighbour is paying in a similar house, suppose that after a little time his income increases. Is he going to have the benefit of this extra subsidy by way of reduced rent, which is going to be paid for partly by the taxpayers and partly by the ratepayers in his locality? That, again, is going to give rise to difficulties.
It is quite possible that, after all, none of these difficulties are going to arise, for the simple reason that this miserable 2s. a week, which is all that the right hon. Gentleman anticipates is going to be given, may disappear altogether if building costs go up. What is to be the connection between subsidies and building costs? We know that, whenever we have put up the subsidy, the cost of building has risen, and that the only time when the cost has come down has been when the subsidy has come down. [An HON. MEMBER: "Rings have raised the prices."] Never mind why it is; the fact remains that there is this correlation between the two, and the fact that the right hon. Gentleman has reversed the decision of the last House, further to reduce the subsidy on the 1924 houses, has had the effect Which we all thought it would have—it has stopped the fall which was steadily taking place and has been steadily taking place for some time. Therefore, without going so, far as to prophesy what the result of the increased subsidy will be, I would say that it is at least very conceivable that the hope of obtaining a reduction of 2s. a week in the rent may disappear if the costs go up.
There is one other point which I should like to put to the right hon. Gentleman, and it is one which has evidently occurred also to the mind of the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Shettleston. Under the Acts of 1923 and 1924, the subsidies from the Exchequer were indeed to go to the local authorities, but they were accompanied by conditions which de-
finitely laid down certain standard's for the houses. I may have overlooked it, but I do not see anything in the Bill to say that the local authority which receives the subsidy provided under the Bill is to maintain the same standards as are laid down in the Acts of 1923 and 1924, and I should very much like to know if there is any such provision, and, if so, in which Clause it is contained. Although I entirely acquit the right hon. Gentleman of any intention to reduce standards, it is just as well that we should know what the Bill does say and what it does not say, and, if there is any omission of something which ought to be in it, we should have an opportunity of putting it in in Committee.
Part IV of the Bill deals with rural housing, and the right hon. Gentleman is sanguine enough to think that it is going to lead to a great revival of the building of new houses in the agricultural districts. Well, agricultural districts are rather slow to move. The right hon. Gentleman himself has quoted figures to show that, although you may give them opportunities, they do not always take them. Personally, I am not very sanguine that the provisions of Part IV are going to produce any very large number of houses in agricultural districts. There, again, it is very difficult indeed to say what the actual amount of the contribution is, because it is not a contribution per house, but a contribution per person, and, therefore, the amount which is going to be paid by the Exchequer in respect of any particular house is extremely difficult to estimate.
The county councils are to have a hand in housing. I must say that I listened with some amusement to what the right hon. Gentleman said on this subject, because I remember that when, in the Local Government Bill of 1929, it was proposed to put new duties upon county councils, the right hon. Gentleman suggested that the county councils were so terribly overworked already that they could not possibly take on anything more. Now they have the new duties under the Local Government Act, 1929, and that is not enough for them, so the right hon. Gentleman is going to give them further responsibilities with regard to housing. I am sure that they will welcome very heartily, as they always do, the extension
of their burdens, and will be delighted to see that they are to have the privilege of contributing £1 a year for 40 years in respect of every agricultural cottage. Whether that £1 is really going to make a substantial difference to the rural district councils, whether it is going to be sufficient to induce the rural district councils to produce agricultural houses, remains to be seen. I confess that, personally, I am very sceptical, but still I wish the right hon. Gentleman every success.
Part V is headed "General and Miscellaneous," and it is very miscellaneous. Clause 34 is an attempt on the part of the right hon. Gentleman to mitigate the provisions of Clause 9. The right hon. Gentleman, I think, was hardly up to his general standard when he suggested that, if we really thought that the provisions of Section 46 of the present Act were unfair, we should have removed them during our term of office. That is the sort of party score which really, I think, does not attract very much approval in this House, because everyone knows what were my personal views on this Section. I expressed them years ago, when I was chairman of a committee that went into the matter. Everyone knows that I have not changed those views, and that the Housing Bill was only postponed owing to exigencies of time and the necessity for the introduction of the Local Government Bill of 1929.
Section 46, I think, is unfair in two ways. In the first place, there is what is known as the reduction factor. The reduction factor says, not only that shall nothing be paid for the buildings, but that even the site value itself shall be reduced according to the use to which the site is put by the buyer. I do not know of any other example of a provision under which the price to be paid for an article is to depend, not on the intrinsic value of the article, but on the use to which the buyer may put it. I cannot and never have been able to see any justice or equity in that provision. It is one which certainly ought to be removed, and I must decline altogether to accept the view of the right hot. Gentleman that, because a wrong and an unjust thing has been on the Statute Book since the year 1919, that is reason for keeping it there for ever. That is a view which I should have thought anyone on
the opposite benches would be the last to put forward, and it is certainly one which I, for my part, cannot accept.
There is a further unfairness about Section 46. The provision that nothing shall be paid for a house that is so bad in itself that it is totally unfit for human habitation is one with which I do not believe that anyone quarrels. Property owners themselves have never claimed that money should be paid for houses of that kind. I think that hon. Members who laugh have not read the documents that have been published by property owners, because in every one I have seen it is always specifically stated that property owners do not ask that a house that is definitely unfit for human habitation should be paid for. What they say is that in all these schemes there are houses which are not unfit for human habitation but which, nevertheless, are treated as though they were. That is a point to which I am bound to draw attention. I have suggested that it may be, in fact it is well known, that there are cases of people who have spent money in trying to put their houses into proper order and have, nevertheless, been treated just the same as those who have not spent a penny. That is not equitable and it is not just. Nor is it just to say that, where a trade is carried on in one of these areas, the trader should have his premises demolished and no compensation paid to him for them, because undoubtedly he has a goodwill arising out of the area, which he cannot carry with him to some other place. The right hon. Gentleman has gone some way to recognise the justice of that contention in Clause 34, but he has not laid down any rules for the guidance of local authorities in assessing what the compensation for disturbance shall be, and he has left it, indeed, entirely to their discretion whether they shall pay compensation at all. I do not think that is going far enough. The Bill should lay down at least conditions under which compensation must be paid, and should give some sort of direction as to the manner in which they should be assessed.
Clause 39, which permits a limited number of small houses to be built for aged persons, is one that is of great value. I approve of it. My only regret is that it is limited to aged persons. Precisely the same argument, it seems to
me, applies in the case, let us say, of two spinsters who live together, neither of whom intends to marry. I do not see why this provision, if it is good at all, should be confined entirely to the case of aged persons. I always sympathise very much with young couples who cannot be married because they cannot find any accommodation over their head. I do not see why it should not be possible to lay down just as strict conditions as to the tenure of the house in the case of a young married couple as it is in the case of aged persons. While certainly this is a matter that will have to be watched so that there shall not be abuse, so that the house shall not be occupied by more persons than was intended, a provision of this kind which would enable more houses to be built with the same amount of material and the same amount of labour and would free a certain number of houses for people with families is of value and it should be extended a little further. [An HON. MEMBER: "What about bachelors?"] I do not exclude bachelors. Clause 40 empowers local authorities to advance money to persons in order to repair their houses. Again, that is a provision to which I certainly take no exception. At the same time, I do not think it would be wise to attach too much importance to it, because the persons to whom money can safely be lent in those circumstances in order to repair their houses are probably very limited in number and, although this may occasionally assist towards putting houses in repair which would otherwise not be repaired, it cannot produce anything like the same result that the more extended use of the principle of reconditioning might have done.
The default powers Clauses, I think, might just as well have been left out, because the right hon. Gentleman knows very well that, however good an appearance they make in the Bill, he will find it extraordinarily difficult to put them into operation if the case should ever arise. That is the experience of all Ministers of Health. Clause 47, in these days when we talk about the new despotism, seems perhaps worthy of being called attention to because, under it, where the Minister on his own initiative and without appeal has chosen to transfer to himself powers which normally belong to a local authority, he is after-
words, by (Sub-section (4), enabled by order to vest in and transfer to the local authority any debts or liabilities that he may have incurred. Clause 48 gives him the power if, to his satisfaction, it is shown that the local authorities have failed to perform any of their duties under the Act, to withhold the whole of any contribution which he has undertaken to make to them. That sounds hardly a punishment fit for the crime. In the first place, he is to be the sole judge whether the local authority has failed in any of its duties and, if he can bring home the smallest dereliction of duty, he has power to withdraw the whole contribution on the faith of which the local authority has undertaken the liability. Those are Clauses to which, perhaps, we may give some attention in Committee. The Bill is not all we hoped for. It contains very little that is new. It will, I think, produce some effect, but not anything very great. Such as it is, however, we on this side will vote for the Second Reading, and we will use such abilities as we possess in the later stages to try to make it a little better and a little more practicable than we think it to be.

Miss MEGAN LLOYD GEORGE: I hope the House will give me that indulgence which is given in a very generous measure to those who, like myself, address it for the first time. I hesitate to intervene in the Debate, because I feel that it is so much a question for those who have had long experience and have made a very close study of the subject. If there is anything which is to me more intimidating than an expert, it is a housing expert. But I venture to speak simply because there are one or two things I should like to say about the problem as it affects the rural areas. Before I come to that, there is another point I should like to mention. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Edgbaston (Mr. Chamberlain) said the provision of houses for aged persons might be made to include spinsters who do not intend to marry. I think that is rather a gamble and, in any event, they would be aged persons before they either came to that resolution, or certainly before they meant to keep it. The Bill has probably been awaited with greater expectation and higher hopes than almost
any other Measure, not only by every party but in the country outside as well and, if it has not fulfilled all those expectations, at least the critics cannot say it is not a, bold and a very enterprising Measure. We on these benches would like to congratulate the Minister of Health because we feel that he has come to close grips with the problem. He leas launched a new crusade against the slums, and I only hope that it will achieve its purpose rather more speedily than some other modern crusades are likely to do. He has found a very ingenious and a very effective form of subsidy, which is the most baffling and the most vital fact in the slum problem. lie has undoubtedly found a way to assist the man with the heaviest burden and the most slender means of support.
Of all the Bills that have been before the House I think that this is the most evenly balanced. Past legislation has always laid the greater emphasis on the problem of the towns than on the problem of the countryside, but now the rural areas have been brought into greater prominence, and I think that hon. Members who represent, as I do, an agricultural constituency, will rejoice if only for that. I think it is not possible to over-emphasise the problem of housing in the towns, but. we can and do under-emphasise the gravity of the problem in the rural areas. There is no doubt that the claim of the agricultural areas to special consideration has been recognised in this Bill, and it was recognised by the Labour Government in 1924. But it seems to me that the Government do not attach the same importance in this Bill to the problem as they did in 1924. I say that because, although the subsidy is increased in the rural areas, they do not have the same relative advantage over the towns,, as they did under the other Act. If they had, the subsidy would be not 50s. but 66s. If the 1924 Act was on a just basis, clearly the provisions of this Bill are inadequate, unless there is some explanation that is not apparent on the surface. If that relative advantage was justifiable in 1924, then it is certain v equally justifiable to-day, because circumstances in the agricultural parishes have not changed, and the workers condition is certainly no better now than it was then. His wages are lower; he is still, in fact, the lowest paid worker in any industry.
At the present time agricultural wages all over the country average about 32s. 6d. a week, and out of these meagre resources the labourer has to find food and clothing for his family. After he has done that, there is very little margin for rent. If his family is large, he is in a worse plight and more to be pitied than his neighbour who is unemployed and receiving benefit. It is true that the rent of the old dilapidated cottage where he now lives is comparatively small, but it is as much as he can afford. If he wishes to improve his lot and move to a house where he has a reasonable chance at least of bringing up his children under healthy conditions, the rent of the new house is quite prohibitive to him. Therefore, it is not a question of choice but of necessity. He has to remain where he is. However diligent, however skilled he may be, there is no prospect under present conditions of an improvement in his circumstances, and unless a very generous measure of assistance is given to him, he is doomed to go on living in a house which is very often no better than a hovel.
I have been severely reprimanded for referring to bad houses in the countryside as slums. I maintain that if overcrowding make slums, then it is correct to call them slums. It is argued that the mortality rate is higher as a result of densely overcrowded areas than of actual overcrowding in houses, and it is not unnatural for people to suppose that the countryside has at least this advantage over the towns—that if you cannot breathe good air inside the cottage, you can at least inhale it outside. This may be true in the case of a man who spends the better part of the day in the fields, but the wife whose duties keep her more or less a prisoner in her very wretched quarters in a poor cottage must suffer. This is borne out by a report which was made some years ago in my constituency, Anglesey, where it was shown that the death rate from tuberculosis among women was the highest but one on the list for the whole of the administrative counties in England and Wales; and yet the death rate of the men came only 22nd on that very black list. There can be only one explanation of that, and that is bad housing. The greater risk to health is for the woman who spends the greater part of her life in these squalid, dark, ill-ventilated cottages,
and, of course, what applies to the woman also applies to young children. I think that that must account for the fact that in 1927 the infant mortality rate in the Island of Anglesey was equivalent to 93 per thousand, which, when compared with even the largest cities, is an alarmingly high rate.
These are the conditions which prevail in one of the healthiest counties you can find. It is known as a health resort. The inhabitants of Manchester and Liverpool come down there to renew their strength and to recruit their vigour. They come down to this island where the infant mortality is so high and the death rate from tuberculosis has reached almost a peak point. I stress these points because I feel that there is plenty of evidence of the appalling conditions in the towns—the limelight has been concentrated there—but the attention of the public is not drawn so frequently or so fully to similar conditions in the country. After all, most of us who live in the great cities have only to walk a few hundred yards from our homes to see the appalling conditions under which our fellow-citizens live, but you may go for miles in the country and never know that that very quaint, attractive cottage which you admire is not a house fit for human beings to live in. If we want to preserve the beauties and the amenities of rural Britain, we should find the means either to recondition or to rid ourselves altogether of these cottages. I am sorry to say that some of the worst examples of this kind may be found in North Wales, and I should like to quote from a report which was made on the position with regard to housing conditions in my constituency in 1918—one of the latest reports which has been made. It has reference to the cottages in the countryside. It says:
It will be readily understood that the size of these cottages leads to overcrowding—it even leads to abuses, such as a case recently discovered in a village where a boy of 15, and twins, girl and boy, aged five, were sleeping in one bed in a cupboard a yard wide, five feet high, and about 10 feet long. There was no ventilation except from the door.
Again I quote:
In his Report the Relieving Officer of a certain village mentioned the death of a resident of that village and said that seven persons had died from phthisis in the same house. It was found that there were seven persons occupying three beds in the same room in that house.
The report goes on to say:
the consequence of this state of affairs may be imagined. Privacy and decency are out of the question. What little that can be obtained is only at the expense of light and ventilation already insufficient.
I hope that the House will forgive me for dwelling so much upon the housing conditions in my constituency, but I do so only because I know those conditions best. If one looks at the Reports that are made in other rural areas, one finds very much the same state of things in England and Wales—damp, narrow, littered-up cottages, with often only an earth floor, the roofs old and defective, and the slates loose, so that sometimes the water comes pouring in and stands in pools on the floor. It is really no exaggeration to say that in many of these cottages you need not look through your window to see the stars, and you need not go outside to get wet.
It is not only a question of reconditioning; it is a question of a shortage of houses in the countryside. It is true that numbers of houses have been built, but in the main they have not been occupied by agricultural labourers, or, indeed, by workers of what the Bill calls "the like economic condition." The building has really been on a comparatively small scale, partly because, as the right hon. Gentleman the Minister has already pointed out, the rural district councils have not been in a position to face the extra expense which a housing scheme would impose upon them, and in some cases it must be said because they lack drive and initiative. There is no doubt that here the provisions of the Bill will come to their assistance. Their burden will be lightened, and the rate will be levelled out more equally over the counties.
I think that many people will welcome the provisions which impose new duties and obligations upon the county councils. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Edgbaston said that all agricultural counties, or most of them—I am not sure which he said—are slow to move. I would like to point out that Anglesey was the pioneer in this matter of the Rural Workers' Act, so that all agricultural counties are not slow to move. It is a very remarkable thing. Anglesey has not a large population. It is very small in area, and yet there are only
four counties in the whole of England and Wales which can claim to have made better use of this particular Act. May I say also that the power of the Ministry to intervene with a, recalcitrant county council is an old and a dead-letter provision. It was simply there for show before. I think that it has only been used a very few times. I know of a case where a backward landlord failed to demolish a row of insanitary houses, and the sea came in and did it for him. I hope that the Minister will be as ruthless and as discriminating in the use of his powers. I would, indeed, urge upon him the necessity of speeding up and accelerating building programmes in the rural areas. The shortage of houses there has a very important bearing upon the problem in the towns.
To-day there is very little inducement for a vigorous and intelligent labourer to remain in the countryside. His natural instinct is to go to the town. He is attracted there by higher wages and better prospects, and as for housing conditions, he probably feels that nothing could be worse than his own cottage at home. So that in a sense, the depopulation of the countryside is still going on not in large numbers, but a slow drift is still perceptible, and in the towns and industrial areas there is overcrowding and unemployment. Those who are competent to judge feel that this is the time and this is the opportunity to adjust the balance between the towns and the countryside. This is the time to encourage as many men as is possible to return to the land. We on these benches are convinced that this aspect will have to be considered in the very near future if there. is to be any permanent solution of abnormal unemployment, and when any schemes of that nature are put forward by the Government the shortage of houses in the-country side will become an even greater and more menacing problem. I hope that I have not abused the privilege that it is the generous custom of this House to grant to maiden speakers. I should like, in conclusion, to say that we on these benches welcome this Bill because we feel that it is the largest potential scheme for unemployment that has yet been put forward. We also welcome it because it. promises to give a chance to the poorest and most heavily burdened worker to live in decent, health-
giving surroundings. The housing of the people is not a problem of comfort but of life, arid by life I mean life in its fullest sense.

Countess of IVEAGH: It gives me particular pleasure that my opportunity to take part in this Debate comes at this moment, since upon me falls the privilege of congratulating the hon. Lady who has just sat down upon her maiden speech. She has made her fellow women Members realise the great addition she will be to their number, which is all too small. She has further vindicated a principle which is often decried but which nevertheless is a great force in our human affairs. I refer to the hereditary principle. The right hon. Gentleman in introducing the Bill and the late Minister of Health both referred to the amount of legislation that there has been on this subject. If legislation can cure an evil this evil ought to have been cured. Nearly 80 years ago, Lord Shaftesbury piloted through Parliament an Act to deal with the deplorable housing conditions in our great cities. That Act was followed by other Acts, all trying to remedy the failures of previous legislation. Royal Coin-mission followed Royal Commission, Select Committees followed Select Committees and legislation followed legislation, and yet in these last few weeks words have been used in Parliament in regard to this problem very similar to those which were used 60 or 70 years ago. Housing conditions have been described as deplorable, terrible, shocking, and disgraceful, and social workers tend to become discouraged at the rate of progress that is made in tackling this great problem. It would seem that the progress has been mainly in the matter of sanitation rather than in the matter of housing and the abatement of overcrowding. In sanitation we have made great improvements. Seventy years ago London had no adequate drainage and no proper water supply. The Thames was the great sewer of London, and up to 1857 the Southwark Water Committee derived its water supply from the foulest part of the river, close to Hungerford Bridge. When we complain of the ventilation and atmosphere of this House we might reflect upon the state of affairs which existed when the Thames was the great sewer of
London, when its tidal waters received the drainage of all the cities on its banks, and the noxious wastes from manufactories were all turned into the river, creating a nuisance which became intolerable. That has been dealt but although we have made progress in regard to sanitation we still have much over-crowding, many insanitary slum areas, courts where the sun never penetrates, basement dwellings, damp and often flooded, and houses with steep staircases, with no conveniences and no water, except on the ground floor. I know of a woman suffering from heart disease who has to carry every drop of water up several flights of stairs, and where children have to perform the duty of carrying up heavy buckets of water, which is harder physical labour under infinitely worse conditions than anything that has been alleged to take place on canal boats. I am specially interested in the housing problem as it affects the great cities and as to how far this Bill will help to deal with the poorest people in the worst districts. Those are people who must be rehoused on or near the sites where they now live. They cannot go very far away from their work. They cannot afford the rents on the new housing estates, and even if they had lower rents on those estates they could not afford the travelling expenses. Their work very often starts early in the morning, and there is perhaps not only the breadwinner concerned but a couple of children who are just beginning to work.
In cases of this kind, when we are demolishing and rebuilding in a great area like London, where we do not count the slums by the acre but by the square mile, under this Bill it will first be necessary to obtain possession of vacant sites in order to erect dwellings. Therefore, in view of the fact that progress in such areas must consequently he slow, I think that reconditioning should not he ruled out altogether. The problem is of such magnitude that no means ought to be neglected in seeking to deal with it. There are numerous examples where bad houses have been changed from being dwellings almost intolerable for human habitation into tolerable dwellings. I should like to see a scheme in the Bill whereby reconditioning can go on at the same time as demolition and rebuilding,
so that there may be more hope of dealing with a larger number of people in the most crowded parts of our larger cities.
The question of differential rents seems to me to be one of very great difficulty. The new type of house—no doubt some person of fertile imagination will invent a name—will be inhabited by persons who have been dispossessed of their dwellings in the slums. These persons will enjoy a rent which will be lower usually than rents for precisely the same type of house elsewhere. That person or that family will not inhabit the house for ever. A time must arrive when these houses for which a lower rent will be charged than for houses under previous Housing Acts will have to be inhabited by persons who, in the opinion of the local authority, are persons who should he given the advantage of a lower rent. There seems to be no possible way of deciding that question other than a "means inquiry" such as has so often been objected to from the benches opposite. When we are dealing with a problem so urgent and so great, I should like to see every obstacle removed which stands in the way of providing the largest number of dwellings for the poorest of the population, and for that reason I regret that there is nothing in the Bill which will help the ground landlord to obtain vacant possession of property for the purpose of housing development. I happen to be associated with a housing trust—the Guinness Trust—which earns a dividend of 3 per cent., and the whole of the dividend is devoted to rebuilding. As the dividend accumulates it is possible for the trust to build flats to accommodate something like 160 families every three years—a fairly substantial contribution towards alleviating the housing problem. For the past 16 years, however, owing first to the War and then to the Rent Restrictions Act we have not been able to proceed as we would have liked. We have only been able to obtain possession of two sites and to house on each of those sites, 160 families. We have acquired other sites but we have not been able to obtain vacant possession, although there may be on those sites persons living who may be deemed suitable for houses already built on housing estates under previous Acts, but they cannot be
made to move and, consequently, those sites are not vacant and building cannot be developed. We have only been able to rehouse about half the number of people that we would have been able to house otherwise. It is provided in the deeds of the trust that the fiats are to be for the lowest wage earners, and when the economic position of a tenant has improved it has been the custom of the trust to give notice to the tenant in order that someone else whose economic position comes within the terms of the trust might occupy the fiat. That, however, can no longer he done under the Rent Restrictions Act.
Then there are the injustices which remain under the Bill. In a clearance area, when by reason of the narrowness or badness of the streets the local authorities order that the whole place should be demolished, there may be, as there must be, certain buildings which cannot be described as unfit for human habitation, buildings on which the owners may have spent money to comply with the bylaws. It is a definite injustice in such cases that those persons should receive no compensation except for the mere site value. The question of compensation also arises in connection with the small trader, the small business man, the small shopkeeper. In such a case his livelihood is at stake. He may have with pains and expense built up his business. It seems to me that in that case the person should have compensation as a right and not according to whether the local authority is or is not in a generous mood.
7.0 p.m.
To many social workers who have looked forward anxiously to further legislation on this great problem it is something of a disappointment that the Bill contains nothing that is really new. We want a great national effort; something in which you will not only have the local authorities, but also the public utility companies, and all kinds of philanthropic effort, together with private enterprise. I do not believe that we can succeed until we get that whole-hearted co-operation, and, unless we do get it, there must be many thousands of people living in the slums in our great cities who will remain there, and we shall have slums in the future as we have had them in the past.

Mr. MALCOLM MacDONALD: I beg that indulgence which the House has never failed to grant to a maiden speech; and I need it especially, because I come into this House and find a certain family reputation already established which my halting speech must not entirely disgrace. I am happy that in this situation I have the particular sympathy of the hon. Lady the Member for Anglesey (Miss Lloyd George) who, if I may be permitted to say so, made such a delightful, and equally effective first contribution towards the discussions in this Chamber. I believe that this Bill will be welcomed throughout the country as a great stride forward in the work of providing good homes for our people. It is everywhere admitted that the greater part of our housing efforts since the War has been to accommodate the better-off working-class families. We have hardly started to build houses and flats for scores of thousands of very poor families whose need for good houses is the most urgent and the most pitiful. Many of these families have striven to get out of their slum or semi-slum dwellings. They have gone in search of new houses which are being provided, and it is not due to their want of effort that they are not decently housed. It is because, when they have applied for these new houses, they have found that they could not afford to live in them, that the rents were too high, that the wages they were being paid held out no hope of enabling them to pay those rents regularly.
Hon. and right hon. Gentlemen opposite, when the Labour party criticised their policy of reducing subsidies used to say that this reduction would have no effect on rents, that rents would not rise, but that they would be maintained at the level then existing. Surely it is time we realised that the key which is going to open new houses for these people is not the policy of maintaining rents as they are to-day, but the policy of bringing down rents within the possibility of the wages which the poorest of these people are receiving. Therefore, the very specific statement—both in the financial statement attached to the Bill and in the speech of my right hon. Friend this afternoon—that this Bill would allow houses to be provided at rents definitely lower than those for which houses are provided under the 1924 Act will be a message of
great hope to many people. It is a vital and essential part of these proposals, and I hope that the Minister and the authorities concerned will press it as far as they possibly can, because, without lower rents, the objects of the Bill will be defeated. It would indeed be a cruel hardship to pull down slums which do provide some shelter in order to build in their places other shelters which those same families could not afford.
We have had foreshadowed a great defence and a great fight on behalf of landowners. We, on this side, shall equally put up a fight for the tenants or would-be tenants. What are the facts of some actual experiences to-day, some of the conditions against which poor working families, for instance, in the East End of London have to contend? I can speak with some authority—here I would whisper to the hon. Lady that I am not one of those people whom she dislikes so much, a housing expert—for a constituency in the East End of London which I have the honour to represent on the London County Council.
I would quote to the House one particular case, not an extreme case, but a case representative of scores with which I have been trying to deal in the last few months. It is a case in which the parents are young. They have three small children, three little girls. That family of five live in one room so small that it can contain only one single bed, a table, and a few chairs. The parents sleep in the bed and the three little girls sleep on the floor. Naturally, that house, containing that room, having been built 60 or 70 years ago, has its floor out of repair. There are spaces under the door and up the side of the door, and the three little girls sleeping on the floor do so in a continual draught. There used to be four little girls, but one died of pneumonia contracted under these conditions. These parents live in mortal terror that more of their children will be taken away in the same way. They came to us and asked if we could find them alternative accommodation. It was absolutely hopeless, because the man, the father, earning £2 15s. a week, cannot afford to pay the 17s. 6d. per week for three rooms which is required for a flat built under the 1924 scheme.
It is true that that is not the only accommodation available in that part of London, but I want to point out to the
House that where parents have not long taken on the responsibility of parenthood and there are two or three very young children, those families are largely dependent on the effort of the local authorities for these houses. There are other houses in the district, houses owned by landlords and by buxom landladies, where there are rooms which have been let at rents which such families could afford to pay, but if the father or the mother of that family goes to these people the first question asked of them is this: "Have you any children? How many children have you got?" And if they answer "two," or "three young children," then, politely sometimes, but always firmly, the door is closed in their face. Landlords and landladies are not very willing, if they can help it, to be bothered with young children in their houses, so I would emphasise that many of these families whom we are trying to help are almost entirely dependent on local authorities for their hopes of re-housing; and the houses to be built must be built near to their work.
The London County Council houses at Becontree and at Beckenham, where the rents are lower, are of no use to these families, for the father, after paying a lower rent of 12s. or 13s. or 14s. a week has to go to Stepney to work and his fares cost him 5s., 6s. or 7s. a week on top of the rent he is paying. I give that as a typical case of what is happening to-day in Stepney, and of some of the tragic conditions to which the Minister has already referred. I would beg of this House, when considering its attitude on this Bill, to have in mind not only average cases but extreme cases as well. As a matter of fact, these parents I have talked about were lucky in being able to keep their room, lucky, compared with others, to be able to keep their children with them.
I had come to me not many months ago a good woman who was living with her husband and five young children in two rooms in Limehouse. The rooms were insanitary and generally condemned. The sanitary inspector had arrived and presented an order for the ejectment of the tenants and the parents had spent many weeks going round the districts trying to get alternative accommodation, either from the borough
council, or rooms possessed by some private person. But they met with no success. Landlords and landladies would not listen to their case when they heard that they had five young children. The father, who is a carter and his own master, was only earning £3 a week, out of which he could not possibly afford to pay a rental of 24s. a week, which be would have had to pay for a four-roomed council flat. We tried to get alternative accommodation. We wrote to the magistrate and got him to postpone the putting into force of the order of ejectment. But the time came when he could not stay execution any longer, and the order was to take effect on the third week from the final sitting of the court where the case was heard. Those last three weeks were equally useless in finding accommodation for the family. So, on the night before the ejectment order was to operate. the mother went to a friend and got her to take one child. She next went to a second acquaintance and got her to take the second child. She then went to a third friend and found accommodation for her third child in another part of London; and, when she had distributed her five children in five different parts of London, then she and her husband went to live in a small shed at the back of the stable where the man kept this cart and horses.
I know four cases where that experience has fallen to families within that small area of Limehouse during the last 18 months. Some of our political opponents accuse us of wanting to smash up family life; but family life is being very effectively broken up under the present social system, not merely in cases where families are split up and distributed in different parts, but also in cases where families are crowded together, seven, eight or nine people sometimes, in one insanitary room. The Minister of Health is going to do something effective by this Bill to save family life, to preserve it, to restore it, by creating conditions in which the poorest of working-class parents can keep their own children and bring them up with loving care amidst the surroundings of their own comfortable home. He will receive the blessings of countless poor people. He ought to receive the blessings of the whole State as well. He may well be proud of the work he is doing to-day the good effects of which will not be con-
fined to this generation alone but will be reflected in the lifetime of our children and our children's children.

Sir KENYON VAUGHAN-MORGAN: The House this afternoon has had a very unusual privilege. One hesitates to use the much overworked adjective, "unique" to describe it, but I think the occasion is without parallel that the House should have listened in the course of one Debate to two maiden speeches both of them delivered in the presence of parents who occupy or have occupied the position of Prime Minister. May I be permitted, not as a very old Member of this House but obviously older than either of the two hon. Members to whose maiden speeches we have just listened, to tender my congratulations and to say, as was said on a classic occasion, that these maiden speeches are each of them such as might rejoice a parent's heart.
The hon. Member who has just sat down related with telling eloquence one of those distressing experiences which is so common of late to all who have any contact or association with the working classes in the East End of London. We all agree that slums ought to go. We are all agreed that we will do all we can to hasten their abolition. As regards the past it is a case of building in baste and, as regards the present, of repenting not indeed at leisure but under the stress of urgent anxiety to remedy the errors of the past.
We are all painfully familiar with the problem of the slums. In my Division, it so happens that, although we have overcrowding difficulties, circumstances of discomfort and gloom, which are only relieved by the courage with which many of the dwellers in such houses face the difficulties with which they have to contend, we have not a scheduled slum area, but we have plenty of places where we want the conditions remedied as soon as possible. If our need were greater we should perhaps have received assistance sooner. That is one of the reasons for which I welcome this Bill. The improvement Clauses may enable such cases as I have in mind to receive attention from the local authority which in this case is the London County Council. It will be able to come to the assistance of the borough council and co-operate with it in its necessary work.
It may be asked, why we have not got on faster. As far as London is concerned, hon. Members will realise that the London County Council has never been deterred by mere considerations of cost. More money has been devoted to housing than it has been possible to spend. Nor has it been because the London County Council has been rather preoccupied with the provision of new houses than in dealing with the older areas. The work of prevention and cure, so far as London is concerned, has gone on side by side; the clearance of slum areas, and the building of new estates has been proceeded with concurrently.
Our difficulties, our obstacles, in the way of speedy clearances have been the necessity for providing new houses before clearance can be begun; the difficulty of securing suitable rehousing sites nearer the clearance area—and a, clearance area is nearly always overcrowded—the difficulty of rehousing the poorest class of tenants at a rent which they can afford to pay; and the difficulty with which this Bill deals, the necessity for constant consultation and approval, step by step, by the Ministry of Health of all actions taken by the local authority. That has involved delay, and when we have a reply from the Government bench I hope we shall have some assurance that the new provisions in the Bill will really curtail the delays which have taken place and which have been obstacles to really getting on rapidly with the job. Delay has perhaps been the greatest of our handicaps. Those are largely administrative difficulties.
There are, of course, the practical difficulties as well. There are economic considerations, and perhaps the greatest is the difficulty under the head of absence from or distance from work. There is the reluctance on the part of the tenant to remove on account of a reasonable attachment to the locality to which he is accustomed and in which he may have local associations and even a personal pride. There is the economic question of the tradesmen of whom they are customers and, above all, there is the ever-present question of the cost of the daily journey to and from work. There is an economic question of another kind which is apt to come in, and that is the distance from the centre of employment, which is felt by some people as a reason which may reflect in their opportunities
of obtaining employment, if employment ceases, or if they should have to seek work in another direction. There is also the question of education. Parents are reluctant to interrupt the education of their children at a particular school where the child is making progress. All these questions, practical and sentimental, weigh in the balance and make progress difficult.
We were recently reminded by the late Secretary of State for Air of the old saying, "transportation is civilisation," and I suppose there is no aspect of the question of civilisation on which transportation plays so big a part. I have no doubt that the Minister of Health, in considering this problem from the standpoint of traffic, will consult his colleague the Minister of Transport in regard to those plans which he is preparing for reorganising the transport system of London. Anything which will help to bring the worker resident outside nearer to his work and consequently widen the scope of residence will all tend to relieve the present difficulty. Let the right hon. Gentleman "step on the gas," now that the Minister of Transport has abolished the speed limit, and get on with the job as fast as possible, regardless of any other consideration.
The Bill breaks fresh ground in freeing the local authority from that close contact with the Ministry which has existed in the past. One of its difficulties is that its finance is rather vague. I welcome the willingness which I take to exist under the Bill to allow owners to deal with the clearance and redisposal of their sites. That may enable some of the largest sites which are in an insanitary condition, and wherewith action is prevented by the operation of the Rent Restrictions Act to be dealt with. I hope to hear that the Bill will enable owners in cases of that kind to deal with their property where they are at present prevented by the operation of the Rent Restrictions Act. The improvement Clauses will, to a certain extent, mitigate the hardship and injustice of the old Act, which required the local authority to deal with the whole area. They will be able to deal with the improvement areas under the improvement Clauses without touching the rest. I particularly welcome Clause 26, which
deals with public utility societies, and here I re-echo the remark of the hon. Member for Southend (Countess of Iveagh) inviting the Minister to take advantage of all co-operation which may be offered, not only from public utility societies, but from private enterprise, particularly in the direction of reconditioning in which so much progress has been made already.
Before I sit down I should like to ask the Minister of Health one or two questions which arise from the point of view of the London County Connell which, of course, will be the local authority for London. He is well aware that the London County Council has a number of important clearance schemes in operation. Some are nearly completed, some have only just been started. Altogether there are about 20, and I should say, taking a mean through the whole, that they were about half way through. What is the Government going to do with regard to them? Will the Government regard them as coming within the provisions of the Bill? From an earlier remark of the right hon. Gentleman I gather that they would not be considered as coming within the Pill. On the other hand, if it is possible, will he consider including all schemes which may have been approved by the Ministry of Health within a certain period, say five years, or, alternatively, should all schemes on which a local authority has already entered be resubmitted to the Ministry? And will the Ministry in any event cooperate by applying the provisions of this Bill?

It being half-past Seven of the Clock, and, leave having been given to move the Adjournment of the House under Standing Order No. 10, further Proceeding was postponed, without Question put.

Orders of the Day — LEAGUE OF NATIONS COVENANT (ARTICLE 16).

Mr. GODFREY LOCKER-LAMPSON: I beg to move, "That this House do now adjourn."
I move this Motion formally, and I do not intend to speak to it, because I understand that the Prime Minister has an announcement to make.

The PRIME MINISTER (Mr. Ramsay MacDonald): I, of course, regret very much that the questions put to me earlier in the day were not taken by myself, but, as a matter of fact, they all covered ground for which my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary has been responsible, and I thought that the House would understand that a matter which was primarily a Foreign Office matter should properly be answered by the Foreign Secretary. But, as the result of certain supplementary questions, the right hon. Gentleman opposite gave notice that he would try to move the Adjournment of the House. He has put a certain question to me now, asking whether, if there is any re-interpretation of Article 16 of the Covenant involving fresh commitments, we will consult the other members of the Council of the League and give the House an opportunity of considering the matter before any agreement involving such reinterpretation is entered into?
I am perfectly certain that there is nobody in this House who would object more strongly than the right hon. Gentleman's late Chief if I gave a pledge of that character, because what it amounts to is this—that it would be quite impossible for this Government or any other Government to exchange views or to express its views regarding the meaning of an Article which the right hon. Gentleman knows perfectly well is still vague in its meaning; that France and ourselves, or Germany and ourselves, or Czechoslovakia and ourselves could not even exchange views as to the meaning of that Article without first of all consulting the Council of the League. I could not take that pledge. Nor have right hon. Gentlemen opposite ever taken that pledge. Nor—this is more important—have they ever acted upon that pledge.
The right hon. Gentleman referred to certain work that we have in hand just now. If we have discussed together Article 16 all that it amounts to is that one says to the other, "What meaning do we individually attach to Article 16?" But at Locarno that was not the case. At Locarno, Germany wanted an assurance as to what obligations she would be undertaking if she joined the League of Nations. That is a very serious thing—the absolute interpretation which I am saying straight away can only be made by the Council of the League if it is going
to have any binding authority at all—but at Locarno that interpretation was given by Powers, other than Germany, represented there, and the interpretation was a new one which introduced language not found in the Covenant of the League. It was handed to Germany as a guarantee, and initialed, and it appears as an annexe to the papers of the Locarno Treaty.
I am not raising that in any controversial spirit; it is a matter of history. I am referring to it only because, when he is reminded of it, no one will understand more than the right hon. Gentleman that it is impossible for any Prime Minister to give the pledge that he has asked for. All that we can do is to say that, having ascertained as far as one humanly can the opinion of the country, and of this House, negotiations conducted on these subjects will be conducted with that opinion well in mind, and never forgotten at any stage. That we have been doing our best to do during the trying two months or two months and a half. On 30th January, in answer to a question upon the business of this Conference, I made this statement:
There may, however, be points in the progress of the work of the Conference when a statement might properly he made to the House, and, if the Leaders of either of the other parties would consult me whenever they think that information is required, I should be glad to discuss with them the advisability of a question."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 30th January, 1930; col. 1183, Vol. 234.]
That holds good to-day. I have never been approached. If the right hon. Gentleman to-day had told me that he put any importance on his question I certainly would have been here to answer it, or, at any rate, I would have explained to him the position in which I find myself, in an early part of my answer. I say to the House, again, that, if there is any information required by the Leaders of the House, if they would like that information to be given here, would they be good enough to come and consult me? I will tell them exactly the situation, and I hope that in that way we shall carry the whole of the parties of the House, so far as representative men are concerned, in the negotiations that we are carrying on. That will not commit either of them to support me. I shall not expect that. But they will both understand what our difficulties are, and the general way in which we are doing our best to meet them.

Sir SAMUEL HOARE: I do not at all wish to get into any argument with the Prime Minister as to the history of the Locarno negotiations. If I did, I could
point out the difference between those negotiations and the negotiations which we understand are going on to-day. I have risen only to say that it seems to me that the suggestion that the Prime Minister has made is a good one. Unfortunately, the Leader of the Opposition is away carrying out a public engagement, but I have consulted certain of my colleagues, and they authorise me to say that they think that the suggestion is one which the Opposition could accept. I shall make it my business to inform the Leader of the Opposition what the Prime Minister has said, and, if the Leader of the Opposition agrees, there can be a meeting between the Leaders of the three parties. In the circumstances, I suggest to my right hon. Friend the Member for Wood Green (Mr. Locker-Lampson) that the object of his Motion has now been attained, and that he can in due course withdraw it. I understand that the Leader of the Liberal party has an observation to make, but, so far as we are concerned, we are prepared, after what the Prime Minister has said, to withdraw the Motion.

Mr. LLOYD GEORGE: I also should like to say that I think the suggestion made by the Prime Minister is an admirable one, and one that meets the circumstances. It would be very awkward to have a Debate in the House of Commons on foreign policy, and especially a Debate on such matters as are being discussed between great Powers at the present moment. It would lead to a good deal of misunderstanding. As anyone knows who reads the foreign Press on foreign affairs, a single sentence is always given a meaning which is far beyond anything which even the speaker himself ever contemplated; an importance is always attached to it which has really no relevance to the circumstances of the case. I am not going into these discussions about Locarno, and others. I think I would rather agree with the right hon. Gentleman that that stands by itself, because of old commitments about the Rhineland and other things. I agree with the Prime Minister that if there have been no consultations it is certainly not his fault. As far as we were concerned,
we never sought consultation upon the subject, and I understand that the same thing applies to the Leader of the Opposition.
It is very desirable, I think, that we should know exactly what we are being committed to, because these commitments are matters of peace and war. There has been a good deal of discussion as to whether or not we were committed in 1914. If we were, we were. committed to something which was very vague and not definite; but where it was a question of honour, whether there was a real commitment or not, we gave the benefit of the doubt to others. We do not want those conditions to arise again. We do not want a commitment, where the French will assume that we have incurred certain obligations which we did not intend to incur. Therefore, to us the very wording of any formula or proposal which is put forward by the Government may be a matter of the most calamitous consequences to this country later on, although they may not have that in their minds at the moment. Therefore, I am very delighted that the Prime Minister has acceded to the suggestion that there should be a meeting between the leaders of the parties, because it is very desirable that foreign policy should not be the subject of controversy between parties.

Mr. LOCKER-LAMPSON: In view of what the Prime Minister has said, which, I am sure, has given a great deal of gratification to the whole House, I beg to ask leave to withdraw my Motion. In view of the announcement that the Leaders of the different parties are to be called into consultation and that they are to receive information in regard to this very important point, I hope that my hon. Friends behind me will let the matter rest there.

Motion, by leave, withdrawn.

Orders of the Day — HOUSING (No. 2) BILL.

Postponed Proceeding resumed on Question, "That the Bill be now read a Second time."

Question again proposed.

Sir K. VAUGHAN-MORGAN: When the Debate was interrupted, I was putting a few questions to the Parliamentary
Secretary to the Ministry of Health as to the attitude of the Government towards local authorities. My first question was, Will the Government include within the provisions of the Bill all schemes which have been approved by the Ministry of Health within a certain period of time? Alternatively, are all the schemes which a local authority has entered into to be re-submitted to the Ministry? Will the Minister extend the benefits of the provisions of the Bill to expediting procedure under schemes which have already been commenced? I should also like to ask a question as to the effect of paragraph 5 of the first Schedule and to know if a scheme which is re-submitted to the Minister for approval, and re-approved by him, may be proceeded with, even though it is now affected by the Derby judgment.
I have dealt with the Bill particularly from the point of view of London and in so far as it helps us to a solution of our very difficult problems in the Metropolis we shall welcome it. We shall make it our business, as far as possible, to improve it where it needs improvement and perhaps assist the Minister to remedy some of those defects in it to which attention has been drawn. We hope to stop some of the gaps which remain and, perhaps, by criticism in the Committee stage to make the Bill a better Bill than it is now. In conclusion, may I say that we all welcome an opportunity for cooperating in solving this difficult problem and, if I may again refer to the speech of the Noble Lady the Member for Southend, I also hope that the Minister will see his way to take some steps in the direction of securing the co-operation not only of the local authorities and the public utility societies but also of private enterprise which has done and is doing a great deal of valuable work in remedying our difficulties. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman by means of this Bill will provide an additional opportunity for useful co-operation in a cause which we all desire to help.

Mr. R. S. YOUNG: Speaking as a representative of the borough of Islington which is one of the most congested areas in London, I need hardly say how heartily I welcome this excellent Bill. It will abolish slums, and it will also
absorb large numbers of the unemployed, not in work merely for work's sake, but in work of real national importance. However as I read the Bill it occurs to me that there are many grave difficulties which will have to be overcome before its main Clauses can be put into operation. I say so because when I have criticised my borough council for lassitude in the matter of building houses for the masses of the people—and I have frequently done so—they have replied in these terms, "If you can fine us alternative sites we shall be pleased to build upon them" and I have had to admit that that was a, cogent and sensible reply. Sub-section (1) of Clause I of the Bill contains the following proviso:
Provided that before passing any such resolution"—
that is, a resolution in favour of the clearance of an area—
the authority shall satisfy themselves—that accommodation available for the persons of the working classes who will be displaced by the clearance of the area exists, or can be provided by the authority in advance of the displacements which will from time to time become necessary as the demolition of buildings in the area, or in different parts thereof, proceeds.
A pertinent question is whether or not alternative sites exist in the central Metropolitan boroughs. Everybody who has studied the question knows that there are no alternative sites there within the recognised limits of present legislation and administration. In a humble way I have been trying for years to study this problem as it affects London, and I have been forced to the conclusion that the only method of dealing with it is that adopted during the War by the military authorities, namely, by utilising some of our open spaces in a limited and temporary manner. During the War, the military authorities had no compunction in seizing many of our large parks and open spaces, building hutments on them, using them for anti-aircraft gun emplacements, and storing various kinds of war material on them. The perfectly legitimate excuse given for this action was the existence of a national emergency. In 1926, when the regrettable General Strike took place, the Conservative Government commandeered Hyde Park as a central milk depot, and gave as their reason the existence of a, national emergency.
I do not wish to quarrel with hon. Members opposite or to stir up strife, and I mention these facts only to elicit sympathy for the modest solution of this problem which I humbly present to the Ministry. If the Great War was a national emergency, if the General Strike was a national emergency, then I claim that the salvation of child life from slumdom is, equally, a national emergency and I want to see it dealt with, not in a leisurely manner but at the first possible opportunity. I regard the salvation of child life as of even more importance than killing the enemy in France. The London parks are owned, either by the London County Council or by the Crown. I make my first appeal to the generous heart of the First Commissioner of Works, and I ask him whether, as a contribution to the solution of this almost insoluble problem of finding alternative sites in London, he in his kindness and consideration and in association with all the other thoughtful and imaginative actions he has taken in making the Royal Parks more suitable for our children, will consider the proposition of earmarking say 5 per cent. of Regent's Park for a maximum period of two years to the Ministry of Health in order that temporary dwellings may be put up there while slum clearance is taking place.
If the Ministry and the Government following up this generous and Christian gesture approached the London County Council, and asked that body to fall in with that line of operations, I am perfectly certain the Government would meet with a generous and a ready response from the London County Council—that is, of course, assuming that the First Commissioner of Works extended his generosity to others of the Royal Parks, not including Hyde Park, St. James' Park and Kensington Gardens all of which are unsuitable for such a purpose. In my investigations concerning the parks and open spaces in London I have discovered that, in and around London, are something like 6,000 acres of park land and open spaces, and of the 6,000 acres at least 2,000 acres are available and would be suitable for such a temporary measure as I suggest. Assuming that we enlisted the goodwill of the First Commissioner of Works and the London County Council, that would provide, on
a basis of 5 per cent., 100 acres of open land upon which temporary dwellings could be erected while these schemes of slum clearance were being put into operation.
The reason why I appeal to the Ministry to consider this proposition is because it would not be enough to leave it to the London County Council. The rival claims of the Metropolitan boroughs, most of which are suffering from congestion and overcrowding would necessitate a quota system—I hope not such an unpopular quota system as that which we have been discussing within the past few weeks, but a quota system which would spread out the allotted space among the most necessitous of the metropolitan boroughs. For instance in the case of Regent's Park the 10 acres or so which would be allotted there, might be divided between the borough of Islington and the borough of St. Pancras, both of which have very congested areas. The reason why I mention a time limit of two years is because I want to emphasise the emergency aspect of the problem. If we regard the problem of slum clearance as one to be solved as quickly as possible, then the inducements held out in this way for its solution must be of a temporary nature, and must be withdrawn after a given time so that the maximum of activity may be reached within the allotted time.
I anticipate that some hon. Members may criticise this suggestion and hurl at my head the accusation that the effect of this proposal would be to deprive many hundreds of working lads from the central districts of London of their opportunities for playing cricket and football on Saturday afternoons. That suggestion, I submit, would be entirely untrue, because large tracts of these open spaces are not used for games at all at present. They are, in fact, not used for any purpose whatever; and, in any case, it is surely the irony of the situation, that the very lads who enjoy these amenities in the parks come from homes, many of which, when this Bill becomes an Act, will be condemned as unfit for human habitation. We allow these poor lads to play games in the park un one afternoon a week and we condemn them to live permanently in slums. We allow them to breathe God's fresh air on Saturday afternoons and the devil's foul gloom during the rest of the week. In addition
to the parks there are other open spaces such as market places. There is the Metropolitan Cattle Market, known as the Caledonian Market—an area of 50 acres which is only used on three days of the week, and on the other four days is a barren desert on which one sees no human being. Surely it would be possible for the Government to claim five acres of such a market which might be used in the way I have suggested.
8.0 p.m.
Then there is Pentonville Prison. I mention that, because a few weeks ago I asked the right hon. Gentleman the Home Secretary whether it would not be possible to demolish that prison and use the site for working-class houses, and I am glad to say that the right hon. Gentleman readily agreed that it would be a desirable thing to do, but in reply to subsequent questions he advised me that the difficulty of finding alternative accommodation for the prisoners was holding up the scheme. I sincerely hope that that difficulty may be rapidly removed in order that we may proceed to deal with the more urgent difficulty which I have already described. What is the idea which I have in mind in relation to these clearance areas? It is this: if the scheme were adopted, within a few months of the Bill becoming an Act, 100 acres would be available on which hundreds of dwellings—hutments, if you please—could be built, which would house as many hundreds of families. I predict that inside two years the back of the slum problem in London would be broken, and, if I am challenged as being too optimistic, I would reply that, provided, the emphasis is laid in the Metropolitan area on large block dwellings in place of the crumbling two and three-storied broken-down houses that now exist, there would be erected on these clearance areas dwellings that would house twice or three times as many families as now occupy them. At the same time, a great deal of valuable space would be saved, so that, after the first two years—and even a less period—the back of the problem would be broken, because as the area became developed, larger numbers of families could be housed upon them.
This brings me to the second part of my speech. I hope that the Minister, in addition to the 70s. temptation or in-
ducement that he offers to the local authorities to build block dwellings, will also bring some greater pressure to bear, for I am convinced that if people will live in the middle of cities, they are far better off in large handsome block dwellings than in tumble-down tenements. I advance that point for this important reason. The Minister stated that he regarded this problem as not merely a problem of bricks and mortar; nor do I. I regard it as a problem of great social importance, for one of the curses of the masses of the people in their home life to-day is that in large numbers of cases they have no privacy; they are living in dwellings which are not self-contained, and they are exposed to the persecution, the pettiness, and the intolerance of landlords and of chief tenants, who live on the premises, and who often make their life a burden. Only last Friday night I sat in my constituency, as I do every Friday, and a man whom I knew well came to me and showed me a notice to quit. He told me that he and his wife were childless. They decided to adopt a child from the Child Adoption Society, and on the previous Wednesday his wife brought home a child with pride and happiness. Within 48 hours of the baby having entered the house, the landlord, who lives on the premises, sent them a notice to quit.
The hon. Member for Bassetlaw (Mr. M. MacDonald), who made such a splendid maiden speech, emphasised this point in regard to the unpopularity of parents with young children. It is not unpopularity; they are simply excluded altogether from houses. It is one of the most intolerable positions that could exist in any civilised country. I wish that the Minister could have put a Clause in this Bill which would have ended the tyranny that prevents parents with young children from having a right to a decent home. We have been hearing a lot about birth control in the House lately. I do not wish to be controversial on that point, but I want to say that those interested people who are mostly responsible for effective birth control in this country are not the societies who are honourably attempting in a proper and scientific manner to carry out this work, but the landlords and chief tenants who are debarring parents with young children from having homes and who, in
fact, are actually preventing them from having children, even though they desire them. That is a monstrous intolerance which no decent country can possibly stand.
Another point has exercised me very greatly. I have looked round London for years, and have been appalled by the immense amount of valuable space that is completely wasted by unnecessary brick walls. I tried to get from the London County Council an estimate of the amount of space occupied and covered in London by brick walls, fences, iron railings and other impedimenta. I was unable to get any information at all, for nobody knew. I was, therefore, forced to make some investigations myself In one street in my constituency—not a poverty-stricken street—this is what I discovered. There were 100 houses on either side, with gardens 60 feet by 20 feet, surrounded on three sides by a wall nine inches thick and six feet high. A simple calculation shows that on both sides of that particular street there were 16,000 feet of brick wall, nine inches thick and six feet high. It is obviously impossible to visualise the amount of space in London which is occupied by such unnecessary things, and there must be hundreds of acres of valuable land in London which are covered by unnecessary brick walls and other impedimenta. If it were possible to clear that space, it would provide gardens, trees, and all kinds of valuable open space which would improve the health of the city generally.
No one who has travelled into London by Liverpool Street station, and has seen from Ilford inwards those miles of slums and backyards that abut on to the railway, where there is as much brick wall as there is open space, can contemplate such a scene without horror and deep regret. Those brick walls are the chief creators of slums; they deny people light and sunshine, they deny them fresh air and health, and they promote every kind of squalor, darkness and dirt. I only hope and pray that it, is possible in the new developments that are visualised in the Bill to lay emphasis on big block dwellings, which would economise pace and thereby promote open spaces around the houses, and abolish all the little individualistic backyards in favour of something in the nature of open spaces. There is at
least one area in London, at Maida Vale, which I know well, where either the landlord or the tenant or both have been wise enough to put this new idea into operation.
They are streets round about Maida Vale, and running along these streets at the back of the houses are huge common gardens. The result is that the whole length of a street, at the back, is one beautiful lawn on which there are dozens of tennis courts. Nobody quarrels, no neighbour is jealous of his friends, they all enjoy the garden, and the children play there. If each of these houses had its own brick wall, fence or hedge, there would not be one tennis lawn in the whole of the street. I hope that we may look on this Bill with sufficient imagination to break away from the old individualistic theories of the past; and I hope I may say without offence. to my friends opposite that, if they will put into operation this enlightened Socialism, sharing all good things in common—if you do not share them, there are no good things at all—if they will only adopt that method, many of our terrible problems of the slums will be abolished.

Sir ROBERT GOWER: I should like to express agreement with the suggestion which has been made by the hon. Member for North Islington (Mr. R. S. Young). If the suggestion he made were adopted, a valuable contribution would be made to the solution of the housing problem, particularly in the large towns. I think that there will be no disagreement at all on any side of the House in deploring the terrible conditions which exist to-day in the slums. It is necessary that this matter should be drastically dealt with, and I am inclined to agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Edgbaston (Mr. Chamberlain) that the Minister for Health has not made the most of his opportunities with regard to this question in the Bill which is now before us. I can asure him and the House that any criticisms which I may make are made in the most helpful spirit. For some years I represented an East End of London constituency in this Rouse, and prior to that time I did a certain amount of social work in different parts of the East End. No one is more impressed than I am of the urgent necessity which exists for this matter to be dealt with.
The first criticism which I would make is that there is no provision in this Bill to make it compulsory on the part of local authorities to provide suitable alternative accommodation for persona who are being displaced by a clearance operation. That is a defect in the Bill. It is true that Clause 1 provides that before passing the resolution declaring an area to be a clearance area, the local authority shall satisfy itself
that accommodation available for the persons of the working classes who will be displaced by the clearance of the area exists, or can be provided by the authority in advance of the displacements.
It is also provided by Clause 7 that the Minister can require a local authority, before acting on a resolution declaring any area to be a clearance area, to undertake to carry out rehousing operations within such period as the Minister may consider reasonable. Apart from these provisions, there is not one word in the Bill which makes it compulsory on the part of the local authority, prior to putting into operation a slum clearance scheme, to find alternative accommodation. I suggest to the Parliamentary Secretary that she should take this matter into close consideration.
The Minister of Health made a declaration regarding the basis of compensation which is to be paid to the owners of properties which are acquired by local authorities under slum clearance schemes. I suggest that Members on all sides of the House will regret the declaration which he has made. There can be no doubt—in fact, it is admitted—that many local authorities realise that they cannot carry out a slum clearance scheme without encompassing the ruin of a large number—and I use these words advisedly—of some of the most meritorious people we have in this country, the thrifty working man who has saved money and invested it in bricks and mortar. I notice that one or two hon. Members opposite are smiling at my words, but when the right hon. Gentleman said there were no houses in a slum area or an area which would be subject to a clearance scheme which were sound, he was stating something which is not in accordance with the facts.

The PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY to the MINISTRY of HEALTH (Miss Lawrence): The Minister corrected that
and said that no houses could be cleared unless they were either themselves unfit for habitation or by reason of their bad arrangement dangerous or injurious to health.

Sir R. GOWER: I am very grateful to the hon. Lady for that explanation, but I would suggest that even there the Minister was wrong, because there can be no doubt at all that there is in every slum area a number of houses which in themselves are perfectly sound and fit for habitation, and which can only be said to be unsound and injurious to health on account of their particular environment. That matter was dealt with by the Departmental Committee which was set up in 1921, and perhaps the House will forgive me if I read some of their conclusions. Paragraph 24 reads as follows:
We have received evidence, however, that, favourable as the clause appears on the face of it"—
that is, Section 9 of the Housing Act, 1919, which was re-enacted in the Consolidating Act of 1925—
the practice is going to be extremely difficult. Owing to the inequity of paying nothing for buildings, which in themselves might be unexceptionable, but which happen to be within an unhealthy area, it is suggested that the local authority will be deterred from representing areas as unhealthy.
I think the hon. Lady will agree that the suggestion made in that paragraph has been borne out by the facts, because my right hon. Friend the Member for Edgbaston said during the last Parliament that a number of authorities were deterred from carrying out slum clearance schemes on account of the injustices involved. The Departmental Committee went on to say—and I think I am right in saying that this was a unanimous Report:
Moreover, the task of the local authority and the Minister of Health, in deciding upon the use to which the land shall be put in future, will be rendered extremely difficult by the fact that upon that use will depend the compensation payable to the owner. The owner of a property in an area allotted for commercial purposes will receive compensation on a scale entirely different from that payable to an owner whose property lies in an area destined for housing, even though the character and condition of the two properties be nearly identical.
The next paragraph goes on to say:
The impression left upon our minds, after conversation with witnesses in the various towns, is that none of them like the pro-
cedure under Section 9. Its drastic provisions are considered likely to lead to such inequality and injustice as between individuals as to encounter violent opposition, followed by possible failure to sustain a case when brought before the Courts.
The Committee also reported:
A great difficulty arises in respect of leasehold property. The compensation is in all cases to be calculated upon the basis of the value of the cleared site. The lease-holder's interest in such a site is in many cases nil. On the other hand, the compensation, whatever it may be, is paid to the ground landlord.
I do not wish to be misunderstood. I hold no brief at all for the house owner who unreasonably, deliberately, or through neglect allows his property to get into such a state of disrepair as to be a source of danger to its occupants or the neighbourhood. In fact, I would go so far as to say that, in my opinion, a number of houses exist which are in such a shocking condition that even site value is too much compensation to pay to their owners, and that there should be deducted from that site value the net cost of clearing the buildings which encumber it at present, but I suggest that it is manifestly unfair, unjust, and monstrous that, so far as compensation is concerned, there should be no differentiation at all between the bad owner, the man who flagrantly neglects his property, and the individual who takes a pride in his property, keeps it in a sound and sanitary condition, and in fact fulfils all his obligations to the community.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Edgbaston stated—and I am sure the hon. Lady who represents the Ministry of Health will agree that statement was true—that the great majority of houses which are situate in working-class districts belong to what might be known as the small owners. The majority of those houses have been purchased by working men—[HON. MEMBERS: "No."] All I can say is that my experience—I am not a housing expert, but I have had some knowledge of some of the districts in London and other great towns, and I do not wish to exaggerate—teaches me that a very large proportion indeed of these houses belong to what one might term the little man, the working man, who by means of thrift has saved a. little money, which he has invested in bricks and mortar. I notice that the hon. Lady
shakes her head in disagreement with me, but she will, I am sure, concede this, that there is a large number of houses, situate in these areas to which the remarks which I have made apply. I would like to quote a statement made a short time ago by a well-known member of the Institute of British Architects, as follows:
Large numbers of the dwelling houses in these areas are kept in good and sanitary repair by the owners, and have been admitted by medical officers, sanitary inspectors, and others to be hi themselves quite fit for human habitation, The owners are largely citizens who, by extreme thrift, have saved a little money and have invested their life's savings (aided by building and similar societies) in what has hitherto been the goal of small investors, viz., the purchase of one or more houses. These people are often well advanced in years and unable to restart the work by which they effected their savings. Under this Clause"—
that is, Section 46 of the Housing Act, 1925—
as now administered, their life's savings are not only confiscated, but in many eases they are left with mortgage debts to building societies or other creditors. which they can never meet.
I do not think that is an exaggerated statement. I think it is admitted on all sides—and, indeed, it must be admitted—that it is not right to deprive the owner of a house, provided he has kept that house in satisfactory repair and condition, of the value of that house and give him at the most simply site value, in other words, to treat him in exactly the same way as the owner who flagrantly neglects his property. The Minister of Health mentioned as a circumstance which he applauded, and which we on this side of the House certainly applaud, that a large number of individuals are endeavouring nowadays to become the owners of their own homes.

Mr. MOSES: Not in the slums.

Sir R. GOWER: The last speaker mentioned that people like to live in a neighbourhood to which they have become accustomed. I assure hon. Members opposite that in most districts there is a feeling of what is known as "local patriotism." People who have been born and bred in a district hays an affection for it and dislike leaving it. I do not think any hon. Member will dispute that fact.

Mr. J. JONES: I will, for one.

Sir R. GOWER: The hon. Member will forgive me for saying it, and I do not mean it offensively, but he would dispute any statement made from this side of the House. I do not wish to repeat myself, but I say that it is unfair to deprive people who have purchased their houses and maintained them properly of the fruits of their savings, and I can assure the House that if the Minister wishes loyal co-operation with him on the part of local authorities in carrying out the provisions of the Bill when passed he will have to alter the provisions of Section 9 so that fair and reasonable compensation can be paid to the owners of what one might term sound houses which are situate in areas the subject of a clearance scheme. The Minister of Health gave one the impression that he considered it just and fair to pay at the most site value to the owners of houses cleared by a local authority. I join issue with him. We know very well that for other purposes the site value is not taken as representing the value of the property. I could quote to the House a number of cases where a Government Department, shortly before the making of a clearance scheme, has valued the houses at their full market value and death duties have been paid on that basis.
I could give the House instances of where owners of houses have been called upon by local authorities to put houses into a satisfactory and sanitary condition and afterwards the houses have been passed by the medical officer of health as being in all respects fit for habitation, and within a short time afterwards the property has been declared to be within a slum area and only site value has been received by the unfortunate owner. Let me quote one case. I am sure the hon. Lady would like to have the particulars. It is the case of a Mr. Walter Henry Batterbee, who owned several houses in New George Street, Hull. After scheduling the property for demolition the corporation served notices on Batterbee requiring him to redrain some of the property and put it in perfect sanitary order and condition, and this he did, at a cost of over £100. I am informed that the property was passed by the medical officer of health and the sanitary inspector as being in good order and condition.

Miss LAWRENCE: When was this?

Sir R. GOWER: I think it was about two years ago.

Miss LAWRENCE: Where was it?

Sir R. GOWER: In Hull. The New George Street scheme was sanctioned and the property was cleared by the local authority and no compensation at all was paid for the buildings. Although there was a mortgage for £700 on the property only, the sum of £400 was paid for the site value. The property was not applied to the purposes of a housing scheme, but the corporation allowed Mr. Batterbee to remain in possession. He still lives there and pays a rent to the corporation of £130 a year, and is left with the mortgage liability of £300.

Mr. J. JONES: He must be getting something out of it.

Sir R. GOWER: I hope hon. Members will treat this matter seriously. As I have said before, I hold no brief for the man who neglects his duty. Property has its rights and its duties, and I suggest to some hon. Members opposite that it ill-becomes them to sneer and laugh at one who is endeavouring, as I am now, to plead the case of the man who has worked hard all his life and invested his savings in bricks and mortar and is properly maintaining his property. The Minister of Health said that in this country every man's home was regarded as his castle. I can assure some hon. Members opposite who are tempted to laugh at some of the remarks I am making—

Mr. VAUGHAN: We are not laughing at the hon. Member at all, but at the humorous remarks of the hon. Member for Silvertown (Mr. J. Jones).

Mr. JONES: You always laugh at me.

Sir R. GOWER: I at once accept that explanation, and I hope that what I have said will impress hon. Members opposite and also the hon. Lady the Parliamentary Secretary. The Minister stated that the basis of compensation had been fixed some years ago, and in the deliberate opinion of the Legislature it had been decided that at the most site value should be paid. I join issue with the right hon. Gentleman. When the Housing Act of 1919 was passed it was not anticipated that the Section
would operate as it has operated. It was understood that the words which appeared in Section 9, and were repeated in Section 47, would be sufficient to ensure that it would be only those properties which were in an unsatisfactory condition which would come within what I term the confiscatory provisions. It was subsequently held by the Ministry of Health, and I believe also by one of His Majesty's Judges, that the Section applied to houses which were not in themselves insanitary and unfit for habitation but which might be held to be so on account of their environment. By Section 9 of this Bill the Minister of Health is making the matter far worse. As was pointed out by my right hon. Friend the Member for Edgbaston (Mr. Chamberlain) the owner of any property, whatever its condition, comprised in any slum clearance scheme will get at the most its site value. He was not exaggerating when he said these provisions might apply to a church.

Miss LAWRENCE: I am sorry to interrupt, but may I correct a misapprehension? A property like a church, or any other perfectly good property, would not be in the area, it would be in land surrounded by the area and would come under Clause 3. If it were perfectly good property, neither insanitary in itself nor so congested as to be dangerous to health, it would be what is known technically as a "blue patch," that is to say, land surrounded by the area, and in the case of perfectly good land surrounded by the clearance area compensation is provided at its market value. Under Clause 3 an area contains nothing but bad houses or houses which by their crowded condition must be regarded as injurious to health; but anything which is not injurious to health in one sense or another will be land surrounded by the area.

Sir R. GOWER: I do not agree. It seems to me that the view which the hon. Lady has just expressed is not borne out by the Bill. I think she will agree that in the past many houses have been taken by local authorities simply upon the payment of the site value when those houses were fit for human habitation, and perfectly sound and satisfactory to live in. If what the hon. Lady has stated is the intention of the Bill, then I hope
that the wording of the Clause which deals with this question will be amended in Committee. I can conceive of a small part of a clearance area where there are say no less than 20 houses fit for habitation. Does the Parliamentary Secretary suggest that under this particular Bill each one of those houses will be land surrounded by an insanitary area. We know that in some of our quaint old towns there are narrow streets such as have been described, and it might be suggested that they did not provide a proper access for air. The houses in such streets might be in a perfect condition, but I suggest that it would not be fair to the owners to deprive them of their property by paying them site value only for the simple reason that they were in that position. I would point out that in that particular street. there might be houses in a shocking tumbledown condition upon which the owners have not spent a penny for many years, and yet the owners of those houses are to be treated in precisely the same way.
I suggest that the Parliamentary Secretary and the Minister of Health will be unable, in debate, to give any justification for a proposal of that kind. With regard to what is known as the reduction factor, it is proposed to perpetuate the existing law that there shall be a deduction made from the bare site value which would otherwise have been paid to the owner of the property which is taken over in respect of that particular area. It seems to me that there can be no justification at all for depriving the owner of property of money to which he would otherwise be entitled. I lay down as a general proposition, which I think will receive the support of hon. Members on both sides of the House, that when a local improvement is effected, the cost, should not fall upon one part, but upon the whole of the district.
It seems to me that the operation of this reduction factor may hi given cases be extraordinarily anomalous. Let me put this case to the House. Assume that there is a district in which there are a certain number of houses in a good state of repair, and it is proposed that part of that district shall be used for open spaces or for the erection of workmen's houses. Let us assume that there is another part of the
same district where a majority of the houses are in a shocking state, and it is proposed that that particular section is to be used for commercial purposes. The operation of this Bill would mean that the owners of the district where the houses are sound would have a reduction made in their compensation, whereas the owners of the dilapidated site would receive the full site value attributable to the land being sold for commercial purposes. That is surely not equitable.
There is only one other thing to which I wish to refer, and it is dealt with under Clause 4 of this Bill. Hon. Members will recollect that only site value at the most is to be paid to the owners of this property, but, if the local authority wishes to sell that particular property, it has to sell it for the best price which can be obtained. In other words, the owner of the property is to be deprived of everything except the bare value, while the opportunity of re-selling it is placed in the hands of the local authority. I submit that Cause 9 is unfair in principle, and I hope that when this Measure comes to the Committee stage the Minister of Health will see his way to do something more for the thrifty persons who have invested their savings in this kind of property, and see that they are treated more fairly.

Sir T. WALTERS: I was under the impression that the object of this Bill, and the purpose we have in mind, is to get some cheaper houses. Slum clearances which we are talking about in the same Bill and in the same breath involve two different propositions. I am in favour of dealing very drastically with the slums. After providing the new type of houses under such a scheme as that which is provided in this Bill, I should be in favour of wiping out all the slums by pulling down all these slum buildings and getting rid of them in that way. I am more concerned about getting cheaper houses, and that is the demand all over the country. I think we ought to address ourselves seriously to that question. We have had considerable experience during the last 10 years in building houses by local authorities and otherwise, and the first thing we ought to do is to examine that experience and see what lesson we can learn from it.
It is quite obvious that a large proportion of the houses which have been built in the past have cost so much money that the rents are far more than the ordinary worker is able to pay. It is also obvious that a large proportion of those houses are not worth the money which they have cost, because they were built at a time when the cost of building was very high. Many of those houses were built under schemes which were not well considered, and they ought to be let at a much lower rent. It is worth considering whether it would not pay us better to wipe out a considerable amount of the capital value at the expense of the Treasury in order to get those houses down to a reasonable rent.
How are you going to carry out the new building programme? I profoundly congratulate the Minister of Health on the bold effort that he is making in the present Bill, but I am greatly concerned at the absence of any organisation in the Bill (which will indeed produce those houses—of any dynamic that will get things done. It is not only a question of money for providing the necessary houses; it is a question of organisation, and, very largely, a question of brains. An admixture of brains with a smaller amount of money will effect more rapid and desirable results than a large amount of money in the absence of brains. I should like to look with careful scrutiny at what is to be the method of getting people to work, of getting local authorities organised, and of getting building schemes actually carried out. I should look, first of all, at the type of house to be built. Are we going to build to the standard of the Tudor Walters report—a very famous document, of which I always like to remind people, and Which is my one title to immortality? Are we going to build according to that standard, or are we going to vary the standard? Are we going to build two-bedroom houses, three-bedroom houses, Or four-bedroom houses? Are we going to build of bricks and slates, or are we going to use concrete, or some new form of construction?
A great many experiments have been tried during the last 10 years, and think it is worth while looking carefully into the results of those various experiments, in order to see which is the best, the cheapest, the soundest and the most com-
fortable house to build. I should not disregard any of the results of those experiments, but should examine them all with careful scrutiny. If we decided that the bulk of the houses were to be three-bedroom non-parlour houses, then the design would need careful looking into. In the case of the type of house providing that accommodation, a difference of from £50 to £100 per house may result from different planning or the carrying out of the work under different organisations in various parts of the country, and, before the local authorities try new experiments of their own, I should like the Ministry of Health to collect the information from the various centres, so that, instead of experiments being tried over again, the local authorities might have at their disposal the best results that have so far been obtained.
Then I am very much afraid that these generous sums of money which are to be provided by the taxpayer and the ratepayer will be an incentive to some of my friends connected with the building trade to exercise still further their ingenuity in obtaining what they call a fair profit on the transaction. Suppose that, incited thereto by this Bill when it becomes an Act, a very large number of local authorities at once invite tenders and embark upon building schemes; and suppose that the first scheme is in excess of the material available, and of the labour that can be secured. What will be the result? Why, at once all the costs of material will rise by leaps and bounds, and those who provide materials will themselves absorb the bulk of the increased subsidy, leaving the unfortunate tenant in the same position as before.
The same thing applies in relation to labour. If you put out more tenders and place more contracts than the labour market can carry out, you have various districts competing one against another, and offering higher wages to get the jobs done. That will be very nice for the men who get the wages, but when you consider that all these wages have to be paid at the expense of the tenants who are going to live in the houses, it will be seen that it is not fair that any one body of men should get wages in excess of the market value as against other work-people.
Then there is the question of money—of the loans that have to be obtained. New
loans will have to be floated. Are all these several local authorities to be putting loans on the market from time to time and competing one against another? Many of them have no expert advice and no particular knowledge of finance, and you will soon have the rates for money and corporation stock rising considerably. I should prefer, myself, to see one great national housing loan that could be floated under the most favourable conditions, and comprise the money needed for the schemes of each of these local authorities. These are matters which need very serious consideration. I believe that we shall have to go as far as rationing our building programme, that we shall have to exercise some control over prices, and, indeed, some control over labour too. I think that, the sooner we face the necessities of the case and get a really good practical organisation, the better will be our prospects of obtaining cheap housing.
Again, I notice that under the provisions of the Bill every matter of difficulty has to be referred to the Minister of Health. It is obvious that he cannot deal with these varied and multitudinous questions which will arise, and they will have to be delegated to someone. I worked for many years with the very efficient men at the Ministry of Health, and no better body of officials is employed by the State. But they are not infallible; they are not omniscient: they are not able to deal with every question that arises. They have not the knowledge or experience, and they have not. the authority. I think that the Minister of Health, if he is to discharge his functions under this Bill, will have to delegate the work to some proper and efficient and competent body.
The work of all these local authorities ought to be co-ordinated. It is too vast to be left merely to happy chance. Besides, there is this difficulty, that very often it is the enthusiastic local authorities who provide the largest number of houses with the least labour, and the supine local authorities are often those in whose districts the demand for houses is urgent. Therefore, some need restraining, and some need stimulating. Besides, there is the grave danger, if, without rationing and without control. local authorities can provide houses according to the nature of their enthusiasm, that, in various districts where good cheap houses
are supplied, people will be attracted from other parts of the country, and that will lead again to overcrowding. This can easily be checked by supervision and by rationing, but not by leaving the matter to mere chalice and haphazard. Under those conditions you would have not only overcrowding, but a serious additional charge for unemployment.
Particularly is this the case with respect to tenement building. I should strongly deprecate any considerable policy of building tenement dwellings in the centres of our large cities. I know that there is a certain number of people engaged in occupations in a city like London who must live near their work, but I should discourage people in every possible way from continuing to live in tenements in London. [An HON. MEMBER: "Call them flats."] Call them flats if you like. I thought that it might seem to be offensive to talk about them like that. I should be very reluctant to permit any considerable number of people to be housed in flats in London whose work made it possible for them to live in the suburbs and on the outskirts. I have heard it remarked more than once that the magnificent and vigorous policy of the London County Council in this direction has in fact tended to draw people to London from other districts where the same facilities were not provided. All this simply means that housing is now a great national question. It is not merely a local authorities' question. It is not a matter for this district or that. Although the Minister of Health has wisely decided to operate largely through the local authorities, and to give them as much discretion as possible, we cannot conceal from ourselves that the final responsibility rests upon the nation, and the organisation of the whole of it must depend upon a great Government Department.
I see the Minister of Health in his place. I might have been more restrained in some of my observations if I had noticed him before. I think I suggested that he, or at any rate, his officials, are not entirely omniscient. That is a phrase that ought to be withdrawn. At any rate, I am certain it is not possible for him, even with his great capacity, even voracity for work and his power of getting through it adequately, to deal with the administration of these great far-
reaching proposals that are contained in his excellent Bill. I believe to make the Measure really effective, to get the houses really built, he should arrange some system of control of prices as I saw suggested in an article in the "Times" this morning. He should have some kind of formally constituted advisory authority to whom he could delegate a great deal of his work. I believe if under the Ministry of Health there was an advisory board consisting of five men, one with a knowledge of design and construction, another with a knowledge of labour conditions, another with experience and knowledge of materials, another with a knowledge of finance, you would have a body which would speed up in every direction, and would co-ordinate the activities of the different Departments that carry out this work and that we should very soon see results which would be of great benefit to the nation.
9.0 p.m.
I congratulate the Minister most heartily upon the audacity of his scheme. I am not sure that I am entirely wedded to his particular financial methods. Perhaps that is because I do not entirely understand them. I have never been quite able to see how it would be possible to arrange a scheme of family allowances which would meet the varying costs and needs of different housing schemes. I should have thought, at any rate as regards slum clearance, it ought to have some relation to the actual costs of the scheme in question. I should have thought that the family allowance, though an excellent arrangement in itself if it produces more money, would have been better ararnged on same sort of proportion to the cost of the new housing scheme. However, I do not care about that. I do not care what the method is. I do not care how ingenious the financial basis is if only all the money that is produced from that basis really inures to the benefit of the tenant. What I object to is any scheme of subsidy which could readily be diverted into the pockets of other interested persons. Even the right hon. Gentleman's scheme will meet with precisely the same result as those of his predecessors unless he adopts a really effective organisation for the control of prices and for co-ordination of the operations of various local authorities. Then he will have a chance of
getting value for his money. I trust that nothing I have said will be taken as any form of captious criticism. I am profoundly anxious to render what small assistance I can in making this an effective Bill, because I believe there is no problem so urgent as that of slum clearance and re-housing. On the effective carrying out of such a scheme depends the physical and moral welfare of a vast portion of the population and of millions yet unborn.

Mr. VAUGHAN: I should like to make some little contribution from my long experience. The time has long gone by when it could be said, as it was said by innumerable people, "When in doubt put your money into bricks and mortar." The builders' job is not to build houses to rent. His job is to build houses to sell. Even if he has large resources, the time would come when they would be exhausted, and he could build no more to rent. In addition to that, even when he tries to build on a large scale and borrows money from building societies—I have nothing but praise for building societies which come to the aid of people, but they are very well paid for it. Generally speaking, a builder, or a private person, has to pay over a long term of years on the average 50 per cent. of the original capital that it took to build the house. Thirdly, the time has gone by for workers' ownership of houses. The mobility of workers to-day demands that a man should not have the ownership of the house he lives in as a millstone round his neck.
In my own Division, the most beautiful Division in the country, there is a mining belt across the middle of it, and I am informed that 50 per cent. of the miners there own their own houses and their own freehold. God bless them! Ownership is a very sweet thing to enjoy. With the difficulties of unemployment which face them there, these men are at their wits end to know what to do, tied up as they are. I have known miners in comparatively early life begin buying their houses, and the continual effort to wipe off the capital, say in 15 or 20 years, has been an intolerable burden and one which ought not to be put upon any working-class family. When at last they wipe off the debt there is a kind of jubilee at the house. Often a
man, a railwayman for instance, is ordered to another position 100 miles away, and he has to begin all over again. I maintain that the worker in these days—it may be a revolutionary idea—ought to have a house without having to find the capital. He wants what the farmer wants, security of tenure, without having to be burdened with this intolerable millstone. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Penryn and Falmouth (Sir T. Walters) has been responsible through his agencies for erecting perhaps more workers' houses in this country than any local authority, and I join him in pointing out a grave omission from this Bill—price control—although I look at it from a somewhat different standpoint.
We have been told—I have heard it over and over again in this House—that under competition you get low prices. Competition does not guarantee low prices at all. Bad trade does, and that is why we have had low prices during the last few years. Under competition prices can soar as they do under any other system. I will give a few illustrations of the jump in prices from 1914 to 1920. Let no man think that I am so foolish as to believe that there was no justification for a rise in prices from 1914 to 1920. There was justification, but will anybody who knows this business justify the increases which I am going to recite. Bricks, per thousand—these are London prices—jumped from £1 14s. to £3 14s. 6d.; cement per ton from £1 17s. 6d. to £4 7s. 6d.; slates, per thousand, from £11 13s. to £36 10s., tiles, per thousand, from £2 10s. 6d. to £6 15s.; timber, per standard, from £15 to £47 2s. 6d.; yellow deaf, per standard, from £22 to £61 5s.
Take the case of Portland cement. Here is a report of the Standing Committee of the Board of Trade issued. in July, 1929. I am going to give the House the argument which was made why the British mark should not be put upon cement. The idea was opposed by the National Federation of Building Trade Employers, and this is what they said:
The members of their Federation used very much more British cement than foreign, but they were apprehensive that the effect of an order might be to force them to restrict their purchases to British cement, with the result that the price
would be increased and the position as to price made less favourable than at present.
Builders actually in the position of appealing to be saved from manufacturers and the tyrants at the head! The Monmouthshire County Council, with which I have the honour to be connected, had a great scheme under which they received a Government grant of 75 per cent. They required large quantities of cement, but only one price was quoted. It was 64s. 9d. Whether the cement had to come from the Medway 200 miles away or from a local works only a dozen miles away 64s. 9d. was the chorus all round the country. They required a tremendous number of pipes in connection with this State-aided scheme, and I will give the prices of tenders: 6-inch, is. 9¾d., is. 9¾d., is. 9¾d. and is. 9¾d; 10-inch, 4s. 10¾d., 4s. lO¾d., 4s. 10¾d., and 4s. lO¾d.; 12-inch, 8s. l¾d., 8s. 1¾d., 8s. l¾d. and 8s. l¾d.
Those are the standard prices and show the wonderful way in which these great syndicates operate matters. Those are the standard prices according to the law of supply and demand in which hon. Gentlemen opposite on both sides of the Gangway believe, as they believe in the Gospel. The law of supply and demand is in accordance with how much they can profiteer. They have a sliding scale of percentages. In March, 1926, they took off 20 per cent.; in August of the same year, when, I admit, coal was dear, 12½ per cent.; in July of the next year, 20 per cent.; in March, 1928, when trade was getting worse, they took off 25 per cent.; in May of the same year, when trade was a bit worse, they took off 32½ per cent.; and again in the same year they took off 42½ per cent., and the price remained at that figure in January last. Let this House wait until all these schemes over the country are coming to fruition! All the materials which I have listed, and many more, cement and pipes, will go up and up. The prices will go soaring as high as ever the country and the Government, and, ultimately, the poor wretched tenants, can be forced to pay.
I heard the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Penryn and Falmouth say, last autumn, in a discussion on a similar subject in this House, that the associations with which he is connected had
tried to build almost in every way that was possible with the idea of providing cheap and good houses. One thing which he said struck me very forcibly. He said that they had built houses in many cases without profit. I asked him about this afterwards, and he said—he will correct me if I am wrong—that what he meant was that in many cases they had set themselves out as a kind of public utility company to make no profit out of the building of the houses. I honour him for that. I regard a capitalist who does that without profit as a blackleg capitalist. I praised him for having the courage to break away from the faith that he holds. I wondered how he had done it, and then I remembered, in a flash. I knew that it was his Methodism that brought him to this splendid state of mind. "God bless Sir Tudor," thought I, but, as luck would have it, at that moment there crossed the Floor of the House the late Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Health, and realised that the right hon. Member for West Woolwich (Sir K. Wood) was also a. Methodist. That is the worst of mixing up politics and religion. The House will agree with me that, knowing the political reputation and experience of the right hon. Member for West Woolwich, while I might say, "God bless Sir Tudor!" I would have to say, "God do the other thing!" to the other Methodist. Therefore, I had to withdraw my good intentions, and leave the matter there.
This Bill is very long overdue. The late Lord Shaftesbury prepared and piloted through this House in 1851, nearly 80 years ago, the first two Housing Acts on the Statute Book. One was for improving the condition of common lodging-houses and the other for increasing the number of workpeople's dwellings. The cost was to be met by the rent, and it was stipulated that any excess should be defrayed out of the rates. The local authority was empowered to buy or rent vacant land and to build suitable houses upon it for the working classes, or to convert existing buildings into good working-class tenements ands—the House will be interested to know this—" if necessary, to supply the dwellings with furniture." I commend that fact to the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Health and
suggest that they might consider even that, seeing that it was a policy passed by this Parliament 80 years ago. In giving evidence some 33 years later before the Royal Commission appointed to inquire as to why the Acts of Parliament had not matured and worked, Lord Shaftesbury sorrowfully admitted that the local authorities had not given his mire a trial. He said to the Commissioners:
If you were to look at the terms of my Act you would see that it meets everything that is required at the present moment.
The other day, we had references to the late Earl Balfour. I commend to the attention of hon. and right hon. Members opposite the words that were used by Earl Balfour (then Mr. Balfour), standing at the Treasury Box in this House, some 30 years ago. He said:
Punish the slum owner, by all means. If the owner of every insanitary dwelling was hanged on his own doorpost, I would not weep my eyes out.
That was what Mr. Balfour said. Even the right hon. Member for Shettleston (Mr. Wheatley), whom the late Minister of Health desired this afternoon to say some revolutionary things, could hardly have said anything more revolutionary than the former leader of the Conservative party. Mr. Walter Long, who was President of the Board of Trade in 1902, said:
The owner of slum property who allowed that property to get into a disgraceful condition and imperilled the lives of those who lived there, was entitled to neither consideration nor sympathy.
I commend the opinions of these leaders of a former generation to the present generation of Conservatives in this House. No compensation! We have had visualised in this House by several speakers the long, hard and rugged road that the Minister and the Government will have to climb in this first attack, in my experience here, upon this great evil. As one who has been concerned with the building of houses and with advising owners what to do when houses fall into dilapidation, I beg the House to cut the word "recondition" out of their vocabulary. You cannot recondition a slum. When you recondition property in a slum you are fastening something about the necks of the poor tenants for 50 or 100 years. Sometimes I deplore the fact
that houses are built so substantially, and that they last far too long. I sometimes wish that they would tumble to the ground after half a century. In South Wales where I was brought up, people established ironworks and erected little hovels where their workmen were to dwell, and those houses are as strong to-day as they were when they were built—almost like the buildings the Romans erected. I would make short work of compensation if I had power as a dictator in this country. I would put on one side of the scale the slum owner or the owner of the slum site on which the slum stands, the owner who has probably been drawing revenue out of the people for half a century, and whose predecessors have been drawing revenue for another half century—

Lieut.-Colonel FREMANTLE: Possibly the owner may be a widow.

Mr. VAUGHAN: On every reform that has been introduced into this House the Conservatives have always brought out the poor widow. How much profit has come from this slum property? It very often happens that slum property is extremely lucrative. I would put into the other side of the scale the loss of life, the loss of health and happiness and the misery for which the owner of the slum property and the owner of the site has been responsible.

Mr. J. JONES: And the widow.

Mr. VAUGHAN: Many women have been made widows there. The Birmingham Education Committee kept the measurements and the weights, of children who lived in the ordinary areas of the city, not slum areas necessarily, and the weights and measurements of children of 12 years of age in Bournville, and in those few years, not a generation, the children in Bournville at 12 years of age were several inches taller and several pounds heavier than those who lived in Birmingham City. Although this bill does not get at the slum landlord as I want to get at him, I hope that the Budget will do the trick. I congratulate the Government and the Minister of Health and all who are connected with him on this glorious piece of Christianity, namely, the grant per person. It takes some courage to talk about Christianity in this House. We have hope now that there will be homes not only for heroes but also homes
for heroines, as the Minister of Health pointed out, and, what is far more important, homes for children who have up to the present been ready for the slaughter of the slums.
The hon. Member for Bassetlaw (Mr. M. MacDonald), in a maiden speech, told how difficult it was far people with children to obtain decent houses. I know one man with six children who managed to get a house. He was asked how many children he had, and he said that he had six but that they were all in the cemetery. On the following week, he got the house all right and when the agent called, sure enough, there was the man with his wife and six children in the house. "I thought you told me they were all dead," he said. "Oh, no," replied the man, "I said they were in the cemetery. They were playing there." There are many of us on this side of the House, at any rate, who have visited time and time again these places of which we are speaking, and we have seen the pathetic attempts made to make slum dwellings into homes—the crinkled pink paper round the mantel-piece, the cheap little prints on the walls, the struggling geranium in the jam-pot, and the little bit of whiting around the slum-dwelling door.
Be it ever so humble, there's no place like home.
These heroines have been trying to provide homes for their children in places which ought to be a disgrace to Christian England. If I may quote Russell Lowell
The time is ripe, and rotten-ripe for change;
Then let it come: I have no dread of what Is called for by the instinct of mankind";
home-making is one of the most precious instincts that this House will do well to foster. Moody, the American, known to a former generation, when he was over here many years ago, saw our country and he told the people that the home was founded before the church. "You in Britain," said he, "stand more in need of homes than of churches."
My last word is this: We on this side are very often jeered at because we talk of a now heaven and a new earth in Britain. We are very proud of that derision. I want to congratulate the Government and the Minister on this piece of work to bring to England a bit of heaven. I am glad that this Govern-
meat has recognised the truth that a man's life consisteth, not in the things that he possesseth, and just as He whom we all serve and recognise, came to give life, and to give life abundantly, I am glad that the Government are doing it literally. I, as a Member of this party, am a proud man this day to be able to congratulate the Government on introducing this splendid Measure which will bring life and happiness, and a little bit of Heaven to this England of ours.

Sir JOHN WITHERS: I should like very much to congratulate the Minister of Health upon the introduction of this Bill. I will not attempt to do so on the lines of the last speaker. To my mind, the existence of the slums is the greatest cause of crime, immorality and sickness that we have in England, and anything which can be done to cure this evil will be welcomed not only by Members on the other side, but by all decent-thinking Members on all sides of the House. I repudiate with the greatest warmth the insinuation which the last speaker made against the good faith of those who speak on this side in support of it. Having said that, I may say I rose to draw the attention of the House, as was my duty, to a point in the Bill which is a serious one and which, if it does not attract the attention of the House, will attract attention, at any rate, amongst large numbers of people outside. I approach the point with some difficulty, because it is the subject matter of an important case before the court of law, in regard to which the court has reserved judgment, and also because it is the subject of a Government inquiry now being held, of which I happen to be a member.
The House will pardon me if I draw attention to this question, not from the point of view of advocacy, but in order that the House may consider the position. I draw attention to the first and second Schedules to the Bill, and the point arises with regard to the delegated powers which are there given. The House will notice in each of these Schedules that the local authority has to do certain things as a preliminary to clearance orders, and compulsory purchase orders. The Minister orders an inquiry, and there is this provision in paragraph 6 of the second Schedule:
An Order when confirmed by the Minister shall become operative and have effect as if enacted in this Act; and the con-
firmation by the Minister shall be conclusive evidence that the requirements of this Act have been complied with and that the Order has been duly made and is within the powers of this Act.
The question of the advisability of having Clauses of this kind in Acts of Parliament is now being considered, and the House will understand that such a Clause makes it impossible for any Court of Justice to consider whether an order has been made within the powers of the Act or not. In fact, I think the Minister of Health will agree with me that supporters of the Clause may even go as far as to say that it does not matter one penny whether any of the preliminary provisions have been carried out or not as long as an order is made. That is conclusive evidence of the fact that all the preliminary requirements have been met, and no possible Court of Justice can take any kind of action on the question. Whether that is advisable or not, I am not here to discuss. My duty is simply to draw attention to this matter.
There is another matter which I should also like to bring before the House. The Minister may order an inquiry. These inquiries are conducted by inspectors on the spot. The report is sent to the Minister, and no one sees it. It is quite private, and he naturally and properly acts upon it. It has been suggested that it is only right and proper that people whose property is to be taken away from them or dealt with in accordance with an order should have an opportunity of at least seeing the report and putting their case before the Minister. I express no opinion as to whether that argument is right or wrong, but the suggestion is made. It is suggested that before the Minister makes an order for slum clearance, the man whose property is to be dealt with should have an opportunity of putting his views before the Minister, or, at any rate, some person who takes responsibility from him. The right hon. Gentleman said that a man dispossessed is entitled to know the procedure by which he is being dispossessed, and it has been suggested that he should know not only the procedure but the grounds on which it is adopted. That is one aspect of the matter which the House should consider.
On the other side, it may be said that there must be finality in this matter; that
it would never do, after an Order has been made by the Minister and the property sold to someone else, that years afterwards somebody should come forward and be able to criticise in the Court the actual making of the Order, and the validity of the Order. Again, it may be said that possibly the Minister ought to lay the Order on the Table of the House so that, if necessary, a prayer might be presented in the ordinary way praying that it should not be made absolute; that somebody at some time should be able to criticise it. It is not for ma in any way, owing to the position in which I find myself, to reflect or argue upon either side, but I thought it my duty to bring the matter to the notice of the House because, undoubtedly, questions will arise in Committee and in another place on the matter. Therefore, hon. Members should certainly consider it. There has been a. considerable amount of agitation in the Press about this particular point, and a very important judge has written a book in which the whole of this sort of procedure is challenged. I suggest that if the House adopts this Clause without altering it, it should be on the understanding that it is without prejudice to any questions which arise as to the validity and desirability of the practice generally. Having drawn the matter to the attention of the House, I think I have fulfilled my duty.

Mr. TOOLE: I am glad of this opportunity of addressing the House this evening, because of the special interest which my constituents have in a Bill of this description. No Bill introduced into this Assembly has received such a warm welcome as this Measure. In fact, outside a few minor points of criticism, hon. Members opposite have really been in great difficulty to find anything really worth criticising. The right hon. Member for Edgbaston (Mr. Chamberlain) was. reduced for argument to introducing the case of two spinsters living together who wanted a small house on the same terms. That was his "widow's mite." After the reception the Bill has had there will be little difficulty in persuading even the Conservative party to support it. If prizes were to be given to the Member representing the constituency with the largest number of slums and the most overcrowding, I should get second prize, because the district I represent is the
second in the country so far as overcrowding is concerned. Recently, searching investigations have been made into the conditions in Salford, and particularly in my own part, South Salford, by students from the Manchester University. Although they have not secured the whole of the facts, they have certainly done useful work in drawing attention to the horrible conditions of the people in that district.
They published a pamphlet, to which there is a foreword by the hon. Member for Withington (Mr. E. D. Simon) who has done remarkably well himself in Manchester on the housing problem. He tells us in that foreword:
If the general public had more firsthand knowledge of the degrading conditions under which tens of thousands of our fellow-citizens are living, they would make so strong a demand for the ending of the slum scandal that no Government could afford to ignore it.
Listening to the Debate to-day I am convinced that there are quite a number of people in this House who do not know anything at all of the slum problem. The reason I have such a great interest in this Bill is because I am a product of the slums. I lived there, if I may introduce a personal note, for illustration only, for nearly 20 years in a small house with a family of 13, two rooms up and two rooms down, each room six feet by four feet. I can never erase from my memory the horrible souldeadening condition which that brought on me, and it was because of those early struggles in the slums in the constituency I now represent that I made up my mind that whatever influence I had should be used politically to get rid of slumdom at the earliest opportunity. Here are a few facts concerning overcrowding and slumdom in by own constituency. In one case they found an attic and kitchen, let unfurnished at 12s. 6d. per week; five sons living in the attic, mother and father in the kitchen, where rats and beetles swarmed over the bed at night.
These are facts which the House should know, and which the whole country should know. It is about time we ceased to smother these things up. In another case, a tenement house—and this is a point that I regret I do not find in the Bill, and I think something should be done to deal with the question of farmed houses—a tenement house with eight rooms, each let furnished at 10s. per
week, except the attic, which is let at 14s. per week. It houses parents and two girls and a boy all over 10. There are 24 people in the house altogether, and the rent being received by the "farmer" of the House is four guineas per week. In another case, two rooms up and two rooms down, there were mother, her sister and brother, two daughters and three boys under 10. These cases can be multiplied at least through half the South Salford district. These investigators quote another case. They say:
Some houses have only a cold water tap in the yard. In those houses in which rooms are let separately this one tap serves for several families, and as the stairs are narrow and winding the upper floor dwellers have to carry water under awkward circumstances. In one house the front door has to be bolstered; there is no door to one occupied attic, the bricks under the window are rotting, and the scullery paving is dangerous. In another house the attic roof has three large gaps to the tiles, and the walls emit bugs.
In the whole country, with the exception of one part of Liverpool, I do not think there is a place where these conditions could be equalled. In addition to quoting concrete cases, the investigators give a point or two as to what people said to them during the investigations. In one house there was a couple who had been brought up in Ancoats. Most hon. Members have heard of Ancoats before. The name has been used in the speeches of social and housing reformers for the last 50 years in every town in which they have made a speech. Most Manchester people know how vile that neighbourhood is. This couple, however, stated that they were longing to return for the sake of the "better position and more air." Several people stated in reply to questions that if they lived on a corporation estate travelling expenses would be too high. One, however, maintained that the money saved on vermin killer would save the additional cost of tram fares. In another case a householder declared that she did not like to use beetle killer because otherwise she had to shovel the insects up in shoals. These are facts and not romance.
I would like to see some of the fine ladies who talk in this House and other places about what they call the miserable sum of 2s. a week, go to these districts. I have seen industrial disputes in Manchester for a shilling a week. I have
seen a 13 weeks' lock-out for the sake of a shilling a week. It is easy for those who are well circumstanced and comfortably placed in a decent home to talk to other people about the "miserable sum" of 2s., but let there be an application by a trade union for an increase of 2s. in wages, and it is no longer a miserable sum. I have here a document bearing the signature of the Town Clerk of Salford. I mention that fact to convince the House that there is no political prejudice in the document. These are facts that were ascertained for this discussion. The document states that there is one street with 237 houses in it, and there are 1,396 people living in that street, or an average of 5.92 per house. In other streets there are the following figures: 155 houses and 1,106 people; 231 houses and 1,060 people; 139 houses and 704 people; 64 houses and 447 people. In other words there are 35 streets which have been investigated. They cover an acreage of 44 acres. The number of houses is 2,375, and the population is 12,034. In other words 5.06 is the average population per house. I suggest that it is humanly impossible for these people to live a decent existence under such conditions.
I am enthusastic about this Bill. I think it is the best thing that the present Government have done. The Bill deals with fundamentals; it goes to the root of things. It will do more to assist the authorities to deal with housing and overcrowding in my district than anything that has hitherto been done. Our problem is an extremely difficult one. First of all we have no land on which to build. We are bound in on every side by other local authorities—Eccles, Prestwich, Stretford, and the River Irwell and Manchester. Anyone who knows the River Irwell needs no further comment from me. It is a place where they go salmon fishing, as can be judged by the tins found there. We are absolutely without land on which to build. It is true that our City Fathers, in the good old days of roast beef and prosperity, did manage, although they did not look after the working-class population, to build one of the finest racecourses in England. It takes up a tremendous amount of land. In fact it is the only really open space. We have also found room for a dirt track. But no one has ever been able to find land for housing.
The Chairman of the Public Health Committee, who is by no means a supporter of the present Government, said:
The housing problem was exceedingly complex. Its complexity arose, in the first place, from Salford being, with one exception, the most overcrowded area, in population in the whole country.
Later, he said:
The medical officer has certified that if all the people who desire to live in Salford were properly housed they would require 4,000 houses. They could not have 4,000 houses in Salford. They would have to go outside. This meant building a practically new town elsewhere, and within the jurisdiction of some other authority.
He stated also:
Eleven thousand people who earn their living in Salford reside outside, but, on the other hand, 34,000 people who earn their living in Manchester and other districts reside in the city of Salford.
I would like the Minister of Health to suggest to local authorities in and around this Lancashire district the advisability of not being so parochial and narrow when they are letting houses, but to take into consideration the circumstances of such a place as Salford. I welcome this Bill on general lines. For the first time it will enable working folk to get a house at a rent which they can afford to pay. That has been a great difficulty in the past. In Manchester I have been a member of the local authority, with the hon. Member for Withington, for the last 11 or 12 years. There, irrespective of political party, everything possible has been done to build houses for the people. It did not matter whether the chairman was Conservative or Labour; there has been a really united effort to build homes for the people. But the difficulty has always been that when you have built the houses, if working folk took them they were compelled to take in lodgers in order to be able to pay the rent, and as soon as the inspector learned that this was done, he turned them out of the houses.
This Bill will, for the first time, assist those who are most in need of assistance. I am certain that no one living do the conditions that I have described earlier in my speech can he expected to get anything out of the spiritual side of life. What I marvelled at during the War was the rapidity with which dwellers in these areas rushed to the Colours. The only thing they had to defend in most cases was a place such as I saw recently, where 11 people were living in two rooms. In that case, the corpse of a baby was put
on the table at which they ordinarily had their meals, and beds were used as chairs at meal times. It is an amazing thing to find such a love for this country among people who have to exist in those circumstances.
I welcome the Bill because in it an effort is being made for the first time to provide houses at rents which working folk can afford to pay. If I were asked what legislation passed in the last 20 years I regarded as most beneficial to the working people of this country, I should, without hesitation, say that it was the National Health Insurance Acts. When the first National Health Insurance Act was introduced it was scoffed at; the term "9d. for 4d." was used in regard to it and all that, but I regard it as one of the finest things that ever happened for the working-class community. But because of this overcrowding and the poverty of the people who live under these conditions, they are compelled to make an almost daily "trek" from the slum to the surgery, and although the National Health Insurance Acts have been very beneficial, legislation of that kind is of no use unless we can get to the root of the problem.
This Measure will be economical in the end. In the area of which I have spoken, out of every thousand children born, 97 die before the age of 12 months, and, out of every thousand people resident in that area, 27 die every year from consumption. Only four miles away, where there are open spaces, decent houses, good wages, and good food, we find that only 25 children out of every thousand die before reaching the age of 12, while only two out of every thousand of the people resident there die from consumption each year. Obviously, if we can get at the root of the matter, and I believe this Bill will do so, the more we spend on schemes of the kind which we are now discussing, the less shall we have to spend on institutions and on treating the people for the diseases which they contract in these over-crowded areas. That is why I am very proud to support this Bill with all my heart and soul, knowing this problem as I do, having lived the kind of life which has been described here this evening, and believing that this is the greatest step forward yet taken in the direction of dealing with the problem of the slums and overcrowding.

Major Sir JOHN BIRCHALL: I am grateful for this opportunity of making a few observations on this vital question of housing for two reasons. The first is a personal reason, and I hope I shall be forgiven for mentioning it. Some 30 years ago I was living in the East End of London, in Bethnal Green, and the appalling conditions of the people, some in so-called model dwellings and others in the worst slums, so impressed me that I was impelled to undertake a political career in the hope that some day or other I might be able to do something to help these people to secure better conditions and to remove from them some of that appalling handicap which prevented them from living decent lives. That was 30 years ago, and very little has been done during that long period. All parties have tried and all parties have wished to do something, but, for various reasons, very little has been done.
The second reason why I particularly value this opportunity of speaking on the subject is that I happen to be one of the representatives of the city of Leeds, which has been much in the limelight in connection with the question of slum clearances. Not only is the question a very vital one there at present, but all hon. Members may not realise the fact that in the past, the city of Leeds has probably done more than any other city in the country in connection with improvements and slum clearance. At one period before the War 66 acres of slums were cleared there, and since the War some 12,000 new houses have been built. I think Leeds can claim that, in spite of the difficulties of this problem, it has made very serious efforts to improve the conditions in its own area.
10.0 p.m.
The problem in a nutshell is that of providing decent houses at a low rent on the spot. Everybody admits that the house must be a decent house. The low rent is a difficulty, and there are some who do not recognise the necessity of building the house on the spot where the people want to live, and not four or five miles away, necessitating a long and expensive tram ride to and from the daily work. This is not a new problem. I remember that, before the War, the "Spectator" initiated a competition for people who would build decent houses for £150 each. I entered for that competition and I built
six houses at £150 each. They are decent houses to-day and people have been living happily in them ever since, at rents of about 2s. 6d. a week. That condition of things represents a sort of El Dorado which we can hardly hope to reach again in this period, but what I have said shows that the problem has been exercising the minds of thinking people for a long time.
What is the main cause of slums? Some people say that the slum is the fault of the people who live in it. I entirely repudiate that view of the matter. Recent inquiries in a certain fixed area showed that only about 5 per cent. of the people living in that slum area could be described as the sort, of people who would create a slum wherever they were living. The remaining 95 per cent. were people who 'would definitely appreciate better surroundings, and who would live under decent conditions if given the opportunity. We have to face the fact, however, that in all slums there are people who ought not to be there, who need not be there, and who are there from choice. There are not very many such people but there are some. Only a short time ago I was in a house in which a family of man, wife and eight children were living in two rooms. They were sleeping in one room, in three beds, and four of the children were grown up. Most of the elder children were at work and the wages coming into that house amounted to £5 10s. per week. They were paying a rent of 4s. 6d. a week inclusive. There is something wrong in a condition of affairs under which people, having £5 10s. per week, live in a couple of rooms rented at 4s. 6d. per week. Of course, I know that under the law dealing with overcrowding they could have been moved into a more expensive and more suitable house, but it is exceedingly difficult to do anything in such cases, although eventually these people were moved. I merely mention that case as an example of the sort of thing which complicates this problem.
We are dealing, however, with the cases of the 95 per cent. of people who are suffering from poverty and who are living in these slums, not because they wish to be there, or for any other reason except poverty. Can we reduce our problem to figures? My opinion is that we have to produce a house at not more than 6s. 6d.
a week inclusive. If we can do that, I believe that the vast number of people who live in the slums will be able to pay that rent for a decent house. We are approaching that figure. In the City of Leeds the most recent experiment is to put up four-roomed flats of two storeys, so that each flat has a separate entrance, at 5s. a week plus rates of 3s. making a total of 8s. 8d. That is too much. Somehow or other, 2s. has to be knocked off in order to reduce it somewhere about the limit of 6s. 6d. We are approaching it, however, and great advance has been made in the last few years in the cost of accommodation. I believe that the City of Carlisle has produced an even less expensive tenement in order to provide the economic house.
This Bill proposes to provide a cheaper house by means of increased subsidies. It also contains an interesting proposal—one of the few novelties of the Bill—for smaller houses for aged people. I desire to make what I hope may be a constructive suggestion in reference to this. In the 1909 Act, the further building of back-to-back houses was prohibited. The city of Leeds has an unenviable notoriety for its back-to-back houses. There are 75,000 in the city, and of these, some 40,000 are decent habitable dwellings, recently erected—that is to say, in the last 25 to 30 years—and they are exceedingly popular with the people who live in them. I would not say a word—no one could say a word—in defence of the old back-to-back house, which was an abomination; there were whole streets of houses with one room up and one room down, with a common closet at the end of the street, and very often a living room over the top of these common closets, and the whole thing insanitary, disgusting and uninhabitable. These must be swept away, and they are being gradually swept away, but the new back-to-back houses are a different proposition altogether. They are far cheaper to build, and they have been put up in blocks of six, eight, and so on, all self-contained with closets in the basement.
The objection to these back-to-back houses is that some of them have only one aspect, and either have no sun at all, or have the sun always. My proposal is that, as an experiment, local authorities, if they desire, should be allowed to build back-to-back houses in blocks of four,
and not more than four. The advantage of building in blocks of four is that every house has two aspects and cross ventilation. There would be air space all round the houses, with a garden to each, and every house would have its own sanitary arrangements. These could be built at infinitely less cost than the ordinary through house. There would be two ordinary bedrooms and a room in the attic, besides a living room and a scullery.
Something might be done in that way to provide a cheap decent house, and one that would be very much appreciated by those who live in them. I would like to make another suggestion. I am convinced that in many cases the limit of 12 houses to the acre is impracticable and unnecessary. I have in mind many cases where there are large open spaces adjoining a housing site. Why should not at least 24 houses be put on a acre where a large open space immediately adjoins the site? I plead for elasticity in this matter, and for allowing the local authority to deal with each site on its merits. In some cases 12 or 18 houses would be enough and in other cases 24 or even more.
The last remark which I want to make is in reference to profiteering on the part of those who sub-let houses or furnished rooms. In my division I came across the other day a house of two rooms, one up and one down, which a woman had taken at 5s. 9d. a week, inclusive. She proceeded to let the upstairs room to a family consisting of man, wife and four children, two of whom were consumptive, at 8s. a week. She had provided, it is true, a bed, table and chair, but that is a small case of profiteering. The most pathetic part of the business was that the tenants of the room implored the woman not to say anything about it, as it was the only accommodation they could get, and they were afraid that they would lose it if anything was said about it. I shall vote for the Second Reading of this Bill, because I believe that it has real elements of improvement, and if it is amended in Committee satisfactorily, it may provide a partial solution of our problems. It will be a costly matter, but I believe that if the expenditure is carefully and economically made, not only will it be justifiable, but in the end it will prove a really satisfactory investment for the people of the country.

Mr. ALPASS: The introduction of this Bill not only gives satisfaction and pleasure to those who sit on these benches, and who, like myself, represent large industrial constituencies, but, what is more important, it will be a real message of hope and encouragement to very large numbers of our constituents, who for altogether too long have had to endure conditions which are absolutely intolerable and degrading. I was surprised to hear the very weak apology which the hon. Gentleman the Member for Edgbaston (Mr. Chamberlain) gave for the Government of which he was a distinguished member in not introducing a Measure to deal with this evil. He said that the question was ripe for treatment. I submit that the question is no only ripe, but over-ripe and rotten ripe for treatment, and that the Bill will really result in reforming an evil, attention to which has been long overdue. The right hon. Gentleman says that they all desired to deal with it.
It reminds me of the story of two Irishmen who set out one night to shoot their landlord. They got behind a hedge, and waited for him with their rifles loaded, but he did not seem to come. By and by, one said to his comrade, "Pat, he is late to-night, isn't he?" The other said, "Yes, I hope nothing has happened to him." That seems to illustrate the attitude of the right hon. Member for Edgbaston and the late Government in regard to this important question. The lame excuse that he submitted to the House was that they were so busily occupied in introducing the Local Government Bill, or, in other words, they were so preoccupied in devising means for making large grants at the ratepayers' and taxpayers' expense to assist big companies making fabulous profits, that they had no time left to deal with people living in slums in our large industrial centres. I think the need for a Measure of this character will not be disputed in any part of the House.
Various speakers have dealt with this question from a national aspect, and I would like to give some figures and facts relating to the actual conditions in the city in which my own constituency is situated. In the City of Bristol we have very many large and noble buildings, of which we are justifiably proud, but our pleasure in possessing them can never be unalloyed while within the shadows of
those buildings exist some of the most foetid slums and most wretched hovels that are to be found in any part of the country—exist also, I would like to say, under the shadow of Christian edifices.
In the City of Bristol we have no fewer than 10,000 houses which our medical officer of health and our housing inspectors agree to be absolutely unfit for human habitation, and we have 789 families living as families in one room each; that is to say, they have only one small room each for all the purposes of what is understood as domestic life. We have 2,494 families who have only two room each in which, I will not call it to live, but to exist, and 751 families in three rooms each. There is one house in my constituency which used to be occupied by one famiy, but to-day there are 11 families living or existing in that one house, with two rooms to each of the families, and conditions which ought not to be tolerated for a single day by any civilised community. There is one street in which every house is occupied by five families.
During the Autumn Recess, in company with the medical officer of health and housing inspectors for the city of Bristol, I made a tour of some of these slum quarters, and I would like to tell the House some of the conditions that we there saw. The hon. Member for South Salford (Mr. Toole) has spoken about the conditions prevailing in his constituency, and they are typical of what prevails in the city of Bristol also. We went into one place, and the medical officer of health, calling my attention to the state of affairs, said to me, "In this room, Mr. Alpass, you would not put your dog to live, would you?" That gives the House some idea of the conditions prevailing in that city at the 'present time. Another place we went into was occupied by one family. There were two rooms, and in the bedroom there were two bedsteads, close together, with hardly room for anyone to get inside the room. I inquired of the mother of the family who slept there, and she replied that the mother, father, two sons, and one daughter, all five of them, slept in the same room, in those two beds, with no partition or anything to separate them.
Those are the conditions Which prevail, and I hail the introduction of this Bill, because I feel that for the first time in the history of the legislation dealing with this question we have a Measure which goes to the root of the evil. This morning I discussed the Bill with the chairman and the secretary of the housing committee and with our housing inspector. The chairman of the housing committee of Bristol has had a long experience in administering or helping to administer housing Acts, and he gave me his assurance, after having studied the Bill, that in his opinion it will enable local authorities who are prepared to work it in the spirit in which it has been framed to make a real contribution towards solving this terrible social evil.
The root problem is the provision of houses at rents which it is within the competence of people to pay. I have here some figures which have been got out by our Housing Committee. They show what has been possible under the Wheatley Act, and what will be possible under this Bill, assuming that the houses cost £450. Some hon. Members may consider that too high an estimate, but that is the estimated cost of some of the houses we shall have to erect. Assuming that the houses cost, all in, £450, under the Wheatley Act we had to charge an inclusive rent of 11s. 4d. Under this Bill we shall be able to build houses exactly similar in design and in accommodation and let them at an inclusive rent of 9s. 3d. The right hon. Member for Edgbaston (Mr. Chamberlain) spoke about "a miserable 2s. a week." If he had to provide all the requirements of himself and his family out of the wages on which many of these people have to exist in the slums, he would not refer to a reduction of 2s. in rent as a miserable sum. I suggest that a reduction of a week will make all the difference between the possibility of these people being able to leave the slums or having to stay there; while if the houses cost less than I have suggested, the rents charged will be lower still.
May I refer briefly to one or two features of the Bill which are especially pleasing to me? For the first time, it makes it possible for local authorities to provide houses at rents within the power of slum people to pay. The right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Woolwich (Sir B. Wood) shakes his head, but
I remember what he said at the time when he proposed to cut down the subsidy. I discussed that question with the Chairman of the Bristol Housing Committee, a man whose practical experience will compare with anybody else's experience in the Kingdom, and he told me that one essential condition necessary to make real progress in the provision of houses was continuity of policy. I would like to remind the right hon. Gentleman the Member for West Woolwich that reducing the subsidy was the means of frustrating many schemes which were then contemplated, and that reduction crippled the progress in housing that would otherwise have been made. That is the opinion of the Chairman of the Bristol Housing Committee.
There is another Clause in the Bill which I would like to commend despite what has been said from the opposite benches. I am glad to note that the Bill contains a provision that there is to be no dispossession of tenants in slum areas until the authorities are satisfied that satisfactory alternative accommodation has been provided. That is an exceedingly important matter so far as my own constituents are concerned. Another Clause in the Bill which I wish to support is that which deals with improvements. I have been shown houses in my own Division, the owners of which have been served with repair notices as long ago as 1920. I saw those houses last autumn, and not a single penny has been spent in repairing them since 1920. In Clause 14 I am glad to see that it is going to be made obligatory on the local authority to see that orders for house repairs are carried out within a reasonable time, not being less than 21 days. I have here a paragraph from a report prepared by our chief housing inspector relating to 24 houses in one part of my Division where the order for repairs was served, and nothing has been done, and those houses are now in such a state that they are only fit to be demolished. I regard this provision as being extremely important.
I know there are other hon. Members who are deeply interested in this very important question, and I would like to conclude by expressing my great gratification at being here to-night to listen to the introduction of a Bill the passage of which will be speedy and the opera-
tion of which will, I trust, be earnest, thorough and sincere. If local authorities will put the provisions of this Bill into operation in the spirit in which it has been introduced, I am convinced that the evils under which the people, who have been condemned to live in the slums for so long, will soon be removed. This stain and blot on our civilisation will then be eliminated, and for the first time the children who have been handicapped from the start of their lives will be given a fair chance and an opportunity of growing up as well-developed citizens and a credit to any civilised community.

Lieut.-Colonel FREMANTLE: I join in the general feeling of the House that this Bill is a long overdue Measure, and one which would have been brought in whichever party was in office, and which, therefore, above all, calls for that Council of State which the Prime Minister has so cordially asked all parties in the House to combine to grant him. We who sit in this part of the House want to combine in providing our side of that Council of State, and, therefore, we support without any hesitation the earnest desire of those in all quarters of the House for the extermination, or the reduction to a minimum, of this difficulty of slum houses and slum areas. We welcome the action of the Government in bringing forward this Measure. We recognise that it is a Measure very largely in continuity with preceding housing policy; we recognise that it embodies the results of the work of successive Parliaments on this problem; and, therefore, we want to seize it from that point of view.
Hon. Members of different parties have spoken fervently of the abuse represented by slums and of the terrors of overcrowding, but, much as I have appreciated and sympathised with the speeches that we have heard in this Debate, I cannot help feeling that many of them may be, if I may say so, the amateur utterances of those who have come face to face with this problem for the first time. It is a phase through which, I think, we have all passed or are passing, but many of the speeches that we have heard have not dealt with the real problem that is before us, and, therefore, while very useful in supporting that public opinion and sympathy on which this whole Measure and move-
ment must be based, they do not help us to come into actual contact with the problem and its difficulties. I am sure that the Parliamentary Secretary will know what I mean.
We recognise the terrors, the horrors, of the slum problem all the more because we have been brought face to face with it. I have the honour of speaking for the whole body of medical officers of health, who are referred to by hon. Members in every quarter of the House as being the bedrock upon which they have based their speeches. As a past President of the Society of Medical Officers of Health, and as one who did, perhaps, as much as anyone before the War as a medical officer of health in bringing before my colleagues in that profession the necessity of dealing with this housing problem, I speak on their behalf, though without any direct mandate, when I say that we wish the greatest possible measure of support to be given to this Bill in general, and, at the same time, the most meticulous criticism of its details in Committee. Therefore, I support most strongly the line taken by my right hon. Friend the Member for Edgbaston (Mr. Chamberlain) in asking the House to give the Bill an undisputed Second Reading, while reserving to ourselves the right, as it is our duty and responsibility as Members of Parliament, to criticise its details most meticulously in Committee.
With regard to vital statistics, which have been referred to again and again this evening, I hope I may be allowed to put in a caveat. Vital statistics were recommended to me by a former Chief Medical Officer of the Ministry of Health as worthy of study because by them you could prove any thesis that you wanted to prove. It is in that kind of way that I criticise the statistics which have been brought forward to-night. It is perfectly useless to compare the vital statistics of one particular slum area of a community with those of the area surrounding it. Let us be quite frank with the problem. Unless we are, we shall not be able to deal with it. The individuals who compose the community living in the slums have all our sympathy and our compassion, but we must recognise quite clearly that they are not the people whom we should choose, if we had the choice, to have as our fathers and
mothers. Why do people live in the slums? It is for bad fortune of one sort or another. It is very often a case of mental deficiency and heredity. It is poverty of one sort or another. They are failures in life, as compared with all those who succeed and manage to get into rather better circumstances. They have our compassion and our sympathy, and we wish to help them, but essentially the great majority of them are people who have come down in the world.

Mr. ALPASS: I entirely repudiate that, as far as my constituency is concerned.

Mr. LOGAN: Does the hon. and gallant Gentleman suggest that the slum dweller is a mental degenerate?

Lieut.-Colonel FREMANTLE: Notice what I said. They include the mental degenerates. We must recognise that the people who come down to the slums would not live in them if they could help it, and the people who can help it are, naturally enough, the better and more successful members of the community. Success depends either upon heredity or ability or opportunity.

Mr. CARTER: On a point of Order. I wish to ask the hon. and gallant Gentleman a question.

Mr. SPEAKER: The hon. Member must not ask a question on a point of Order.

Mr. CARTER: I only wish to ask if the expression of opinion that the hon. and gallant Gentleman has given is that of the medical officers of health?

Lieut.-Colonel FREMANTLE: I am glad to answer the question. I am only saying this is the general opinion that I have formed, and I believe I shall be endorsed in it by medical officers of health. I learnt my public health in the urban constituency of Leeds, and I have no doubt that what I am saying is true, that as a general rule people do not live in slums from choice, but because they cannot help it, and they cannot help it as a general rule, because they are less able to cope with the conditions of this world than their better favoured friends who can live further outside. We want to help them, and that, is one of the difficulties of this slum problem. I should dispute the suggestion 0f the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Edgbaston that slums are not made in our day. I regret to say that I think they are made in our day.
If you look at the real, natural history of housing communities generally, you will find all along the line that houses which have been fashionable at one time have, by degrees, become less fashionable. The five-storey house built for the gentry or aristocracy after a time have come down in the world and have been divided into three or five tenements, and have become slum houses. If one goes to Bethnal Green—I know that there are so-called model dwellings in Bethnal Green—one will see that houses built 150 years ago for the gentry living outside the City of London are now slum houses, and I have not the least doubt that in the same way houses now considered fashionable will one day become slum houses, unless we can adopt means of prevention. Slum areas are not, thank Heaven! what they used to be 200 years ago. We have paved streets, pavements, and drains which did not obtain in those days. Therefore, we want an historical perception in dealing with this question of slums.
One of the greatest merits of this Bil is its continuity, that it is really preserving a general continuity in regard to housing Measures which are gradually getting to work. Many accusations have been brought against previous Ministries because they have not dealt with the slum problem. Those of us who have studied the slum problem and the housing problem knew that it was impossible to deal with the slum problem until we had a sufficient surplus of new houses. That, of course, was impossible until we had had a very large measure of fresh building. We now have that very considerable measure of fresh building. Medical officers of health generally throughout the country recognise that there has been an improvement. We look forward to the result of the census of next year which will tell us exactly the state of overcrowding as compared with 1921. We shall have very definite data on which to proceed. Meanwhile, all reports of medical officers go to show that there is an improvement in housing accommodation, although there has been a great change in the transposition and disposition of population. There has been a great gravitation towards Greater London, which has made the position in London more difficult. A greater gravitation to other big centres of population like Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield and
Leeds has also made the position more difficult. Hon. Members know well that we cannot expect an El Dorado even from this Measure unless we have a surplus of houses coming into the market.
This Bill is supposed to deal with both problems. It is supposed to enable us to close houses and to demolish slum areas, and at the same time to build houses. I hope that it will do so. We medical officers of health have been working for a very long time on this question of the closure and demolition of houses. The right hon. Member for Edgbaston did right to remind the House, and the Minister of Health will endorse it, that the greater part of this work of closing, demolishing and repairing bad property has gone on under the Public Health Act of 1875 and the Housing Acts and is constantly going on to the tune of 600,000 houses per annum, which have been repaired and improved. I have worked for 13 years as a medical officer of health and I realise that the procedure is incomplete unless you have got to the stage when the owners refuse or are not in a position to comply with the demand for repairs. Then, the local authority have the right and duty to close the houses, and if the owner does not comply with the order, they can demolish the houses.
Closing and demolishing orders have, unfortunately, been a dead letter since 1914, and the result is that, in a report of a recent year from the medical officers of health in England and Wales, of 2,500, houses recommended for closing and domolition, only 500 were demolished. That was because there was not a sufficient supply of new houses. Consequently, no Measure, not even this Measure for demolishing slums or clearing slums will be of any good unless it is going to help to provide new houses in which to house the persons removed from the slum areas. It is from that point of view that we must examine this Bill. The clearance of slum areas has been regretfully slow in the past because of the shortage of housing accommodation. The Minister of Health, in his opening speech, which I appreciated so warmly, regretted the fact that there had been such slow progress in clearing slum areas. I do not think that he was entirely fair from the scientific point of view. The reason for the clearances being so slow, is, in the first place, short-
age of houses. He did not mention that one very material reason for the delay in clearing slum areas is the Rent Restrictions Act.
The Rent Restrictions Act has not been mentioned in the Debate. The Minister of Health does not wish us to mention it, because it is a difficult subject to deal with. The right hon. Member for Edgbaston did not deal with it while he was in office. I frequently asked him to deal with it, but he did not do so because it raises so many difficult questions. The present Minister of Health does not deal with the subject in this Bill, but those of us who look at the housing question and understand it, know perfectly well that the Rent Restrictions Act is one of the things that is impeding the clearance of slum areas. If hon. Members want proof of that statement, they have only to go to the professional and non-political body who are responsible for deciding these questions. I refer to the Surveyors' Institution, who look at this question simply from the interest of the property, whether private or public. They have recognised, as most of us know who have had to deal with property, that the obstructions introduced by persons who are protected, but who were not intended to be protected, by the Rent Restrictions Act, are holding up property from development. That is one of the reasons why we have not had slum areas dealt with hitherto.
The third point, which has been mentioned by the Minister, was in regard to decisions. The fourth point is the question of injustices. I speak again as a medical officer of health. I have no sympathy with those who own house property or who have bought house property in clear recognition of the understanding arrived at by the 1919 Act with regard to compensation. Hon. Members who laugh cannot have looked into the difficulties as I had to look into them as chairman of the Housing Committee of the London County Council when we were trying to deal with slum areas—and we did deal with them to a large extent. I would remind hon. Members who laugh at my experience as a medical officer of health, that I have also had experience of this subject as chairman of the Housing Committee of the London County Council for two years after the War,
when we laid down the main lines of action in that very difficult period. We went ahead there with the Tabard Street area, and it was one of the most wonderful pieces of clearance ever done, replacing the slums by tenement buildings which are recognised as a good contribution to the housing problem.
A very great difficulty has always been that where there is a recognised injustice under the law the local authorities will not face it. It may be an unduly tender feeling for the owners or to something else, but I ask hon. Members to recognise the fact that all local authorities recognise that, where you have an injustice of that sort, it is a definite obstacle to the clearance and the action of the law.
I do hold with those who want to give increased compensation to persons who, with open eyes, have definitely put their heads into the noose of the slum area. Everybody who has had to deal with these areas knows that there are hard cases. Looking at the theory of it, I ask the House to realise that while there is a certain definite bad asset, recognised by law since the 1875 Public Health Act, in the case of an insanitary dwelling, it was not until the recent housing Acts were passed that it was recognised also that it was a bad asset to have a good building inside an insanitary area. Surely that can be set right under the appropriate valuing surveys by a definite loading factor. You load the valuation with a certain factor because of the amount of displacement that is needed. There is a certain big loading factor that you make for insanitary property. Although I think that should operate, it should be a much smaller loading factor if you have a good sanitary building inside an insanitary area. That should be recognised. It may be a different factor for an insanitary area, 5, 10 or 20 per cent., according to the particular insanitariness of the area, but, if you can get the value properly adjusted so as to give satisfaction from the point of view of justice, you will get local authorities to go ahead much more quickly.
Medical officers of health will welcome certain parts of this Bill. In Clause 17 there is a very valuable power which enables part of a house to be closed without closing the house altogether. There are also valuable provisions in the im-
provement Clause, which is really the only novelty in the Bill. The provision for the aged should he extended, as the right hon. Member for Edgbaston has suggested. The method of subsidy is also a valuable feature. It attacks overcrowding, which is really the greatest difficulty of the problem. No Measure yet has really tackled the problem of overcrowding, and, although there will he great difficulties in practice, I think the Bill will enable us to focus attention on the most overcrowded houses and the most overcrowded areas. Local authorities have power to differentiate in the matter of rentals. I am glad this power has not been laid down in the Statute, but is to be left to the local authorities.
The question of overcrowding and slums must be looked at from a long point of view, and I am certain that 50 and 100 years hence people will say that this Bill, by itself, is only toying with the subject. It is proposing to replace individuals locally in the areas from which you are hoping to turn them out. That is a proposal that bas constantly been brought forward and pressed by the inhabitants themselves, as we know on the London County Council; and if you are combining that with the actual necessities of the case it is impossible to meet the requirements. You must envisage the future. A question which has not been mentioned so far is decentralisation, and if you are proposing a subsidy to remove individuals from slum areas it would be more satisfactory to propose a subsidy to remove factories together with the workers from slum areas. You have a factory moved into the country, with no provision for the workers. The workers move to the country, with no provision for their factories. The real solution is to move the people with the factories, but in order to do that, you must have your town planning provisions, which have been promised but not yet envisaged. In this Bill you are putting the cart before the horse, and it will be useless without your town planning Bill.

Ordered. "That the Debate be now adjourned."—(Sir C. Hennessy.)

Debate to be resumed to-morrow.

ARMY AND AIR FORCE (ANNUAL) BILL.

As amended, considered.

CLAUSE 5.—(Abolition of death penalty in certain cases.)

11.0 p.m.

The SECRETARY of STATE for WAR (Mr. T. Shaw): I beg to move, in page 4. line 15, at the end, to insert the words:
(2) In Sub-section (1) of Section six. paragraphs (b), (h) and (k) (including the word "or" immediately preceding the last-mentioned paragraph) shall be omitted. and in Sub-section (2) of the said Section after paragraph (e) the following paragraphs shall be inserted:
'or
'(f) Without orders from his superior officer, leaves his guard, piquet, patrol or post; or
(g) By discharging firearms, drawing swords, heating drums, making signals, using words, or by any means whatever, intentionally occasions false alarms in action, an the march, in the field, or elsewhere; or
'(h) Being a soldier acting as sentinel. leaves his post before he is regularly relieved,'
When we were in Committee, owing to a regrettable mistake, a decision was taken, or recorded, which was evidently against the wishes of the Committee, and I think the House will welcome an opportunity of recording what is its real opinion on this matter. What I propose is that the three offences mentioned in (f),(g) and (h) should be removed from the Section under which a death penalty can be inflicted to the Section under which the death penalty is deleted and in which imprisonment can be inflicted. The Committee left absolutely no doubt in the minds of anyone as to what the intention of the large majority was. It was, that the death penalty should be restricted to two broad offences, one treachery, the other mutiny. I shall not make a long speech on the matter which was debated fully in Committee. It is only the regrettable accident that happened that makes it necessary for me to move this Amendment.

Mr. GUINNESS: It is quite true that last Thursday we had a Debate of more than two hours on the point dealt with by this Amendment, and that had it not been for the accident that hon. Members opposite did not understand how the question was being put we should no doubt have
had a division on the question. I agree with the right hon. Gentleman that in view of the other decisions that we had on that same occasion, and the expression of opinion from other parties, there is no doubt that the majority are in favour of the Amendment which the right hon. Gentleman has now proposed so as to put the Bill back into the form in which it was introduced by him. In these circumstances I do not think it would be reasonable to keep the House up by debating the subject again. As soon as we discussed this somewhat narrow issue we had a further Debate and Division on a much larger question—the suppression of the death penalty in the case of desertion on active service. In view of the decision of the Committee, a decision which most of us on these benches considered to be unwise, it would be clearly straining at a gnat and swallowing a camel if we were to divide on this smaller issue now.

Colonel Sir GEORGE COURTHOPE: I do not want to delay the House for more than a moment, but I feel that I am entitled to say a word before the Amendment is put, because it was on an Amendment moved by me in Committee that the alleged mistake was made the other night. No doubt the Government honestly believe that it is in the interests of the men themselves that they are putting forward this Amendment, but I believe that they are making a very grave mistake. We all hope that war on the scale of the Great War may never take place again. We all hope that we may never be exposed to dangers of that kind again. If we are not to be exposed to such dangers again, it does not matter in the least to anybody if the capital penalty remains on the Statute Book. A number of Members here have, no doubt, like myself, taken duty at listening posts and positions of that kind during the great War. It is 15 years ago since I had an experience of that kind, but the memory of it is as fresh as if it had occurred yesterday, and, as a result of experience, I feel confident that the House, by carrying this Amendment, will be making a mistake against the interests of the very men whom it wishes to relieve from an extreme liability. Let me try to picture to the House what this position is. I am speaking now, not of the middle paragraph in the Amendment of the Secretary
of State for War, which deals with the discharge of firearms and false alarms. I do not mind much about that paragraph, because I do not think that what it deals with is a probable danger in modern warfare. I am speaking of paragraphs (f) and (h) which deal with the case of a sentry or picket or guard leaving his post. Those of use who, during the great War, had experience of listening-posts in "no man's land," know what a nerve-racking task that was.
Probably there is no individual duty performed by the soldier which is so important from the point of view of his comrades, and probably there is no individual duty which, at certain times, puts so severe a strain upon the nerves of the soldier. I, personally, with those very vivid memories of "no man's land" during the Great War in French Flanders, in my mind, feel that to pass this Amendment is to put a temptation and a difficulty in the way of nerve-racked men. I can only judge from my experience of the Great War and one can only assume that if there is another war, the soldier will have to face similar or even worse experiences. What was the experience in the last War? The man on duty of this kind, found himself, very likely, lying soaked to the skin and chilled to the bone, straining every nerve of eye and ear, for sight or sound which might indicate a danger threatening his comrades in the trenches behind him. A man in that position knew that the safety of his comrades and perhaps even the honour of his country, depended upon his watchfulness. The man was worn with weeks and months of war.
I appeal to those Members of the House who have been through such an experience themselves, to recall their own feelings on such occasions. Every sound may seem to a man in that position to be the movement of an enemy advancing upon him. There were rats scuttling through the shell-holes. Later in the season when plant growth took place, it was remarkable to notice the wind among the poppies. It sounded like hosts of men creeping on. Then there were the shadows cast by the clouds moving across a fitful moon, and the ground mist rising and drifting into one's face, which seemed to smell of gas, that most deadly thing in war. Another element which tried a man's nerve were the sound of
every shell going overhead. Those who experienced it will agree that I am not overstating the case as it appeared to a tired man. The sound of every shell, in my experience, always seemed at one moment in its flight to be coming straight to oneself. It was a terrible strain upon an overwrought nerve. What was worse still was the trench mortar, the aerial torpedo or the Minnenwerfer, with its slow, winding gloomy flight that seemed to last so long. The thud as it fell on the earth seemed to shake the ground all round one, and one waited in that breathless second, which seemed so long, for the explosion which might send one to eternity.
Then there was the terribly slow movement of time, the looking at one's wristwatch, and thinking, "Surely my time is over," and finding that half your watch is still to go. All these things made the present seem like hell. Any chance of getting away from it seemed to certain men like heaven. If we had a war like the last, and the manhood of the nation is conscripted, heaven would mean only two places—hospital or prison. If you get to hospital, you have to be wounded. Prison is left to the weak mind that gives way, to the man who fails as the slow minutes pass on in that listening post waiting for the relief to come. The possibility of prison leads to the greatest possibility of relief and changes from hell to heaven. It is proposed by this Amendment that they should go to penal servitude, and that is why I object to it. It is holding out a great temptation to nerve-racked men under the conditions which I have tried to describe. It is holding out an opportunity of the one thing for which he is craving in his weakness. It is the greatest mistake in the world to regard these things as punishment for an individual crime. I could have forgiven any man any crime, but what I am trying to tell the House is that if they pass this Amendment, far from giving any relief to that individual, they are taking from him one of the things that help him to stick to his job. They will be holding out to him a great temptation that may seem irresistible. I can understand the mentality of a man to whom such a temptation may prove almost irresistible. If he gives way to that temptation, he is jeopardising the lives of his comrades who are sleeping the sleep of exhaustion behind him,
relying on his watchfulness. Therefore, on behalf, not only of those comrades who depend upon the sentries doing their duty, but on behalf of the sentries themselves, I appeal to the House not to put temptation in their way, not to take away anything that may be a help in the hour of stress and nerve-rack to the individual man to stick to his job and do his duty.

Lieut. - Colonel Sir GODFREY DALRYMPLE-WHITE: It has struck me that these Debates have ranged only over the possibilities of another European war. We have talked about nerve-racked men and that, in the minds of many hon. Members, may have given the impression that there is some unreality about this discussion, because they hope, as we all hope, that, with the League of Nations and after the experiences of the last War, it may be very long before there will be a European war of the same sort as the last, and perhaps never. What we have to face is that year after year we are exposed to frontier wars, on the frontiers of India and other places, where we fight against very cunning and crafty foes, whether Waziris or Afridis; men who can creep in on the sleeping troops.
If this Amendment is carried, there is nothing to prevent the whole of an outpost, headed by the officer who commands it, leaving its post and allowing the wild tribe to come in and massacre those who lie behind.
There is another point. Everyone has his views about capital punishment, whether in the Army or in civil life. I would say that there is much less reason for doing away with the death penalty on active service than in civil life, because, after all, if you acquit a murderer, you hope he will not murder somebody else, but if you risk it on active service it is a matter not only of one man's life, but of many men's lives. I hope the House will consider that we are not merely legislating as to whether this shall take place in another European war in the terrible conditions of the last War, but that we have to think of our Empire frontiers, whether in India or Africa, and the possibility that sleeping troops may be killed simply and solely owing to the fact that the outposts have come in, thinking that perhaps it is
better to be imprisoned than to go through the nerve-strain.

Amendment agreed to.

Bill read the Third time, and passed.

ECCLESIASTICAL COMMISSIONERS (SODOR AND MAN) MEASURE, 1930.

Captain BENNETT: I beg to move,
That in accordance with the Church of England Assembly (Powers) Act, 1919, this House do direct that the Ecclesiastical Commissioners (Sodor and Man) Measure, 1930, be presented to His Majesty for Royal Assent.
I do not think I need detain the House for more than a few minutes. This is a one-Clause Measure concerning a very small ecclesiastical area, namely, the Isle of Man, and it is entirely of a non-controversial character. It gives the Ecclesiastical Commissioners the power to make grants to the necessitous clergy of the Diocese of Sodor and Man. There has always been a very evil tradition of clerical poverty in the Isle of Man. Whereas in England the Ecclesiastical Commissioners endeavour, with success generally, to raise the minimum income of incumbents to £300, the minimum aimed at in the Isle of Man is only £200. There is little else to be said, but in order to avoid any misunderstanding on a technical point, I may say that, although the Isle of Man is not really included in the United Kingdom, and its church is an independent church with its own law, yet for all practical purposes it has, since the 15th century, been treated as in the Province of York.

Sir G. COURTHOPE: I beg to second the Motion.

Mr. ALBERY: I have several times been present late at night when these Measures have been brought up and though I do not wish to put any obstruction in the way of this Measure to-night I would ask whether particulars of these Measures are circulated to hon. Members before they are brought forward. [interruption.] It may be that the Measure is in the Vote Office, but I do not think that is sufficient. We ought to have these Measures circulated to us personally, so that we may know what is going forward and have some opportunity of looking through the Measure. I regard these Measures as of great importance and deplore very much the manner in which they are passed in this House. I am not going to raise any further objection tonight, but I wish to register a protest.

Question put, and agreed to.

Resolved,
That in accordance with the Church of England Assembly (Powers) Act, 1919, this House do direct that the Ecclesiastical Commissioners (Sodor and Man) Measure, 1930, be presented to His Majesty for Royal Assent.

The remaining Orders were read, and postponed.

ADJOURNMENT.

Resolved, "That this House do now adjourn."—[Mr. T. Kennedy.]

Adjourned accordingly at Twenty-five Minutes after Eleven o'Clock.